Thomas and Beal in the Midi

It is 1892. Thomas Bayly and Beal Terrell, the white son of a landowner and the black daughter of a farmworker on a Chesapeake estate, have escaped from post-Reconstruction Maryland to France in order to live as husband and wife. They begin their new life together in Belle Epoque Paris, where Beal, beautiful, indelible, thrives as the subject of fascination among a gaggle of American artists. Thomas, struggling to plan a future, decides to buy a winery in southwestern France, but Beal, back in the farm life she thought she had left for good, must figure out what her marriage has made of her and who she wants to be.