It's a unique season for Avignon and theater lovers: the intermittent workers' strike is paralyzing the festival. One by one, the shows are canceled. Visitors wander under a blazing sun, looking for the rare venues where a few actors will still perform. Like Mathilde, known as La Jogar: having become famous since leaving Avignon, she is finally back in the city where she grew up, and for a magnificent role. The man she loved so much, and who loved her so much, Odon Schnadel, learned of her presence through rumor. He himself lives here permanently, between his barge on the river and the small theater he runs.

That year, with his company, Odon took all the risks. He staged a play by an unknown author, who died in dubious circumstances: a certain Paul Selliès, whose young sister Marie—a raw nerve—had also just arrived in Avignon, a little lost, full of confused hopes... or insidious questions.

Because there is a mystery surrounding the work of Paul Selliès that these characters either hide or, on the contrary, touch upon, sometimes unintentionally, often in pain.

Delving into the heart of passions, dreams and lies, short-lived reunions, happiness in the form of memories, loves we leave behind, islands we leave behind, Claudie Gallay's new novel ties and unties the silences of a summer heavy with secrets.