This is a tense, gripping novel about forbidden love. Set in Paris and Canada in the winter of 1946. While playing in the woods, children discover a severed finger and soon the corpse of a man who is the victim of a terrible crime. The murder connects the past: it's linked with the fate of the young Frenchwoman Adele who, during the war, fell in love with a German soldier and was branded a collaborator. In Canada, she hopes to forget her dark secret. But then the past rears its head - with a deadly consequence.