IN 1999 PARIS, Hénri Durant, a jilted photographer, was remodeling his apartment and discovered a diary under the floorboard which had been there since 1938 when Cécile Dubonnet celebrated her twentieth birthday. Cécile, a naïve, romantic young woman, had fallen in love with a German diplomat in pre-war France, which, as Germany invades Poland and France enters the war, challenges the bond between her friends and details her struggles in her diary.