In the late 1700s in a village east of Trois-Rivieres, Lower Canada, young and high spirited Marie Anne Gaboury, born 1782, with no dowry, no marriage prospects, is despatched by her widowed mother to serve as assistant housekeeper in the priest's home. On her way to what she sees as a lonely secluded life, she encounters sixteen-year-old Jean Baptiste Lajimoniere, eldest son of the area's wealthiest farmer having a swim. She gets a hearty playful splash and arrives at the presbytery, bedraggled and miserable.

Eleven years later, Jean Baptiste comes home to farm after a few years of...