It was only after her death that the work of New Zealand writer, Katherine Mansfield, became well known, thanks to her editor and husband, John Middleton-Murry. She had left New Zealand to travel around France, and she died there from tuberculosis. Thirty three years later, Middleton-Murry is invited to France to approve a new edition of her collected letters and journals, and there he meets a young woman, Marie Taylor (also from NZ) who reminds him strongly of his dead wife. As the two become friends, Marie starts reading old correspondence between Mansfield and her husband, and discovers the true nature of their relationship and that Mansfield`s dying wishes regarding her writings have been ignored by the manipulative, and less-than-honest, Middleton-Murry.