Brigitte works for a college in the admissions dept, but wakes up to a shock when her life changes overnight. Her boyfriend of six years up and move to Egypt, and the next day she gets let go at work because a new computer system can do her job for her. With nothing to do and no one hiring, she turns to her mother, who is tracking her family's geneaology back as far as she can. Her mother hits a wall when she can't find any more records from before her family left France. Brigitte, wanting to please her mother and with nothing better to do, tracks down some more records for her, first going to Salt Lake City and then South Dakota, where she discovers that one of her relatives was a Sioux Indian girl who somehow ended up in France and married a Marquis. Now interested in the geneaological project, Brigitte flies to Paris to find out more. While there, she meets a French professor, and they enjoy each other's company. But after Brigitte goes back home and has no real life left, she decides to take a job in Paris, where she will have the time and resources to write a book about the little Indian girl, Wachiwi. Several chapters of the book are about Wachiwi's life and how she was taken from her family to another tribe, meets a Frenchman, and makes it to France, where she falls in love and gets married.
While the underlying story line was interesting, I found this book to be difficult to read and very repetitive. What took up 326 pages could have been made into a much shorter, better-written book, and I found myself getting irritated with it throughout my reading of it. I think the characters were under-developed and could have blossomed into memorable people who felt real to the reader with a little more effort. It was very disappointing, as I had heard the Danielle Steel books were very good. I guess I will have to read some of the older ones to find out.
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