As summer drags by, 13-year-old Jimmy, forced by circumstance to become an adult too soon, runs up against the limits of his small hometown and his turbulent life, caught between a mother on the slide and a stepfather who keeps her down.

Pierre Perdrix has been enjoying an enchanted though restless existence since the enigmatic Juliette Webb burst into his life, a stranger who landed in his family's unique world like a meteorite, and who by her presence alone will force this tight-knit microcosm to redefie their boundaries and finally begin to fully live their lives.