"Through letters with a famous author, one French librarian tells her love story and describes the brutal Nazi occupation of her small coastal village" -- Saint-Malo, France: August 1939. Jocelyn's husband Antoine is drafted to fight against Germany. As World War II rages, Jocelyn uses her position as a librarian to comfort and encourage her community with books. When the Nazis occupy Saint-Malo it is turned into a fortress, and the German commander ruthlessly begins to destroy books deemed subversive. Jocelyn hides some of the books while desperately waiting to receive news from her husband Antoine, now a prisoner in a German camp. She writes letters smuggled to a Parisian author, telling her story in the hope that it will someday reach the outside world.