Quebec, the 1830s and 1840s. As she attends the bedside of Jérôme, her second husband, Élisabeth recalls her youth, her marriage to her first husband, Antoine, life in remote Kamouraska where he is seigneur, their love dissolving in his mental illness and cruelties, her falling in love with an American physician, Georges Nelson, and the aftermath of Antoine's violent death.—<[email protected]>