Celia Pippet, founder of a feminist magazine, audaciously steals a bizarre artifact of Adele's life from the British Museum. Joined by her friend Martin, a filmmaker, and American academic Tamara Sass, she flees to Bez in the French Pyrenees to escape detection and to pursue the trail of the beguiling Adele. Here they plan to make a documentary on a case of high-class prostitution and an unpunished crime. Sixty years before, Adele had been rescued from Bez by Dr. Jonas Sylvester. He brought her to Paris where her enigmatic beauty soon became legendary. When Sylvester summons his sister Blanche to look after the adolescent Adele, he is not prepared for the relationship that develops between them nor their escape from his tyranny. He takes his revenge. Moving between Blanche's account of her life with Adele and Celia's search for clues to that life, the stories converge in southern France. There the three friends discover Blanche's existence and Adele's true, if unbelievable, identity.