1933. American Jessie Lesage steps off a boat from Paris and onto the shores of Vietnam. Accompanying her French husband Victor, an heir to the Michelin rubber fortune, she's certain that their new life is full of promise. Jessie knows that their vast plantations near Saigon are the key to the family's prosperity, and while they have been marred in scandal, she needs them to succeed for her husband's sake-and to ensure that her trail of secrets stays hidden in the past. Jessie dives into the glamorous colonial world, and meets Marcelle de Fabry, a spellbinding French woman with a moneyed Indochinese lover, the silk tycoon Khoi Nguyen. Descending on Jessie's world like a hurricane, Marcelle proves to be an exuberant guide to ex-pat life. As a fiery political struggle builds around her, Jessie begins to wonder what's real in a friendship that she suspects may be nothing but a house of cards.
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