Franny Frisbee is an unhappily married woman. Having left New York to live in Paris with the family of her husband, the Marquis of Malrive, she embarks on an adventure in Paris with her childhood friend John Durham, who wishes her to divorce her husband and marry him. Through Franny's crisis between her rights as a woman and what is best for her family, Edith Wharton explores the clashing cultures of Parisian and American life and the role of women at the turn of the century in this moving novel of love and scandal for an American woman abroad.