The Distant Lands, Julien Green

Having left a gloomy London and after a difficult crossing with Mrs. Escridge, her ruined mother, at sixteen, Elizabeth arrives in Dimwood, a rich Georgia plantation where a relative, William Hargrove, takes them in. Will one of them restart her life and the other begin hers in this unknown country where winter does not exist, amidst magnolias and roses? The happy plantation, however, hides many dramas. In 1850, the United States had never been so close to a rupture between South and North. Secession is in the air. Elizabeth believes that nothing ever happens, until one ball night, she sees Jonathan. Of course, it's always the person who isn't right for you, the one against whom you are warned, the enemy in short, who makes your heart race. Love knows no bounds.

Life, around the young Englishwoman whose blonde beauty causes havoc, organizes itself in Savannah, then in Virginia at a family friend's, "Uncle" Charlie. There, it's the whirlwind of society parties, and the crowd of young cousins, friends, black servants, among whom are Betty, an old maternal woman, devoted with all her soul, and an enigmatic Welshwoman, Miss Llewelyn, who manages the Dimwood plantation and secretly plays matchmaker for Elizabeth and Jonathan. He has married a beautiful rich woman who has a little black blood in her veins. So she took her young husband to Europe, to Vienna, where it doesn't matter for "being accepted".

In Virginia, on Charlie Jones's estate, Elizabeth reciprocates the love of Ned, the still-student son of her lavish guardian. But without forgetting Jonathan. And she wonders: "Can one love two men at once?" Fate will decide...

Related to all the great families of the South, having spent part of his youth in his distant country, Julien Green recounts, in this book full of love and fury, the adventure of a being of desire, for it is for Elizabeth to possess the truth in a soul and a body.