Recounts the story of Marguerite de Roberval, a young French noblewoman. During a colonising expedition to New France in 1542, she falls in love with a soldier. Jean-FranƯcois de Roberval, commander of the expedition and Marguerite's guardian, is so outraged at the disgrace she has brought upon the name Roberval that he abandons her, her lover, and a servant on the Isle of Demons, a small island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Marguerite survives, spending nearly a year entirely alone. More than two years after her abandonment, she returns to France, rescued from the island by a Breton fishing ship.