Disguised as a passenger, a homeless woman lives in Paris's Roissy airport until she meets a man who makes her confront her past. Every day the narrator of this gripping novel hurries from one terminal to another in Charles de Gaulle Roissy airport, Paris, pulling her suitcase behind her, talking to people she meets-but she never boards an airplane. She becomes an "unnoticeable," a homeless woman disguised as a passenger, protected by her anonymity. When a man who comes to the airport every day to await the Rio-to-Paris flight-the same route on which a plane crashed into the sea a few years earlier-attempts to approach her, she flees, terrified. But eventually, she accepts his kindness and understands his loss, and she gives in to the grief they share, forming a bond with him that becomes more than friendship. A magnificent portrait of a woman who rediscovers herself through a chance connection, Roissy is a powerful, polyphonic book, a glimpse at the infinite capacity of the human spirit to be reborn.

Daniel Lefebvre (Phillipe Torreton) works as the principal of an infant school in the poverty stricken region of Hernaing. His attempts to serve his pupils are thwarted by the incompetence and laziness of the local authorities. He becomes involved with the struggle of a local family to escape from the squalor and depression of the area. However, all his efforts seem in vain, and his wife Valéria (Maria Pitarresi) grows resentful of his reluctance to have another child.