Season of Light begins in 1788, in the heady days just before the French revolution, when Paris is fizzing with new ideas about liberty and equality Asa Ardleigh, the impressionable 19-year-old daughter of a country squire, has traveled to the city with her older sister, Philippa, and Philippa's new husband In Paris, they are introduced to the literary salon of Madame de Genlis It is in this salon that Asa meets, and falls in love with, a dashing intellectual and idealist, Didier Paulin