Paris, 1720. The Hospice of La Salpêtrière is overrun with 'difficult' women. Halfway around the world, on the American frontier, French settlers are in want of wives.

At the asylum, a list is drawn up: eighty-eight women of childbearing age to be shipped to New Orleans. Among them are Charlotte, Geneviève and Pétronille - a sharp-tongued orphan, an accused abortionist and a rumoured madwoman. They make the voyage over the ocean, knowing nothing of the harsh and extraordinary lives that await them, or how they will come to love and betray each other time and again in this wild and beautiful land.