It is 1946 & the people of France & England are facing the aftermath of the war Banished by her beautiful indolent mother to England Barbary Deniston is thrown into the care of her distinguished father & conventional stepmother Having grown up in the sunshine of Provence allowed to run wild with the Maquis experienced collaboration betrayal & death Barbary finds it hard to adjust to the drab austerity of postwar London life Confused & unhappy she discovers one day the flowering wastes around St Paul's Here in the bombed heart of London she finds an echo of the wilderness of Provence & is forced to confront the wilderness within herself