Alberta Selmer escapes from her cold, suffocating provincial life in Norway to seek out the summer riches of Paris: a city where the bohemians will never die, where there is absinthe, endless talk of cubism and the petrol engine is replacing the horse on the Champs Elysees. However, Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century is a huge sea on which Alberta and her freedoms are cast. With no connections, few work prospects and little money, Alberta is forced to become an artists model.
