It was the end of May 1901. Reporters from all over France descended on the small city of Poitiers. After receiving an anonymous tip, police discovered a 52-year-old woman , emaciated , completely naked , making strange noises and uttering incomprehensible words and phrases, in a dark room with the window shutters nailed and locked shut, a room that happened to be in the very proper mansion of the widow of a former dean of the university’s prestigious Faculté des Lettres . The woman was her daughter and was the sister of a former subprefect who lived just across the street. It was an unthinkable crime: a woman held captive in her home for twenty-five years. The scandal ripped through Poitiers and then all of France. It would dominate public discourse in the country until the trial was over. This book is also about a man and a woman and all that kept them apart. One was Protestant , the other Catholic ; one a liberal Républicain , the other from a conservative Royalist family; one with family ties to nobility, the other dedicated to helping the working man; one older and wiser, the other young and carefree. Everything was against them . During the 19th century, France was struggling to stabilize its government, pitting those yearning for a true republic against those wanting a return to the monarchy. This young couple was caught in the eye of the storm, falling in love in spite of it all and suffering the consequences . To understand what really happened, author Viviane Janouin-Benanti pored over the newspaper accounts of the scandal and read all of the court documents and witness testimonies. Over a century has passed, but remnants of the deep divisions that fed the public scandal surrounding this case are still present any time the Poitiers Affair is mentioned.