Summary

Caroline Ferriday serves as the narrator of Chapter One, which opens with the beginning of Caroline’s day, and the beginning of her love affair with Paul Rodierre. An employee of the French consulate, Caroline works in mid-town Manhattan as head of family assistance. Her heavily detailed first-person narrative style immediately pulls the reader into Caroline’s world, as she describes her colleagues. New York City seems to ooze out of the pores of its residents, as Caroline describes her boss, Roger Fortier, whose commanding figure seems to have, “a lot in common with the imposing male figure of Wisdom chiseled above the [Rockefeller Plaza] entrance. The furrowed brow. The beard. The angry eyes” (7). The year is 1939 and the foreshadowing of a world war crackles through the French Consulate.

Caroline comes from a line of women involved in charity: “Grandmother Woolsey...