An American scholar studying in France finds a box of mementos from a woman who lived through WWI. What he doesn't know is that the box of romantic items, including love letters, was planted for him by a secret admirer as a test of his romantic potential. From a distance she evaluates his reactions to his findings. The mementos are shown throughout the book as images that are photographs and scans of real items that the author had found and inspired the novel. There are barcodes in the book for Smartphone scanning to view the images.