Publisher's Synopsis
Recommended to Stanford by his English son-in-law, Prytania Scott Obée is a young mixed-race woman from New Orleans who arrives in Paris in the late 1950s hoping for a job. Stanford is fascinated by her - she seems quite unaccountably mesmerizing, beyond her undoubted beauty. Soon Prytania's small turbulence begins to engender more noticeable effects. Her first rejected beau finds it hard to take no for an answer, struggling to control his resigned anger; a troubled artist, who has secretly adored her, kills himself; the wife of her second beau, a married powerhouse mime artist, announces she is pregnant. In the end, passions are inflamed, everyone must learn a lesson or two, and some are altered permanently.