Part I, Chapters 1-5 Summary

The novel opens in a Paris bakery shop. The baker is making his second batch of bread that morning. Business is good. Outside, he sees an attractive girl and decides that it is safe for him to look since his wife is out back with the employees. He decides the girl is too skinny for his tastes but is very sexy. She enters his shop and purchases a loaf of bread. The baker detects an accent in her French, perhaps English. At the sound of the voice of his wife, Jeanne-Marie, the baker's fantasy ends.

Dee Sleign leaves the shop thinking that Frenchmen are sexier than Englishmen. She had been enjoying her summer in Paris but knows it will end soon and she will have to decide what to do with the rest of her life. As...