Fulfilling her mother's dying wish, anthropologist Susannah Connolly travels from her lifelong home on the Connecticut shoreline to the fabled French Camargue, to see its famous white horses, finds a mysterious saint linked to her family's history, and falls in love with an American journalist-rancher with a spirited but troubled daughter.

A man bears witness to his grandfather's deathbed confessions, which reveal his family's long-buried history and his involvement in a mail-order novelty company, World War II, and the space program.