To Daniel Bouchard, the word love is synonymous with loss. He experiences early hardships that rob him of the people he most cherishes and leaves him bewildered and lost in a world he doesn't understand. His childhood and youth are solemn, and he buries his emotions deeply in order to hide his broken heart. After high school, Daniel is accepted at a prestigious university in New York, and so he leaves what remains of his family behind in Paris to begin a new life. But grief reaches him even there. As he struggles with existential questions about love and sorrow, he meets a young woman named Greta who changes everything. Daniel finds comfort in her presence and joy in her smile, and for a brief instant in time, he is gloriously happy. Then Greta leaves him, without a word of explanation, and Daniel is once more struck with confusion and loss. For more than two decades, he searches for reasons for what has happened-only to discover, through a series of astonishing coincidences, that he has come full circle with a new perspective.