Jean-Claude Van Rijckeghem

In 1808 Ghent, eighteen-year-old Constance runs away from an arranged marriage to a much older man and by stealing his clothes, sneaking out of the house disguised as a man, and joining Napoleon's army. For a young woman coming of age in the early 1800s, about all that's available to her is marriage. When Constance's parents arrange her a marriage with a man more than twice her age, she's powerless to resist. Four months into the marriage, she slips...