In a French courtroom, the trial of a woman is taking place. Gladys Eysenach is no longer young, but she is still beautiful, elegant, cold. She is accused of shooting dead her much-younger lover. As the witnesses take the stand & the case unfolds, Gladys relives fragments of her past: her childhood, her absent father, her marriage, her turbulent relationship with her daughter, her decline, & then the final irrevocable act. With the depth of insight & pitiless compassion we have come to expect from the author of Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky shows us the soul of a desperate woman obsessed with her lost youth.