Paoletta Cadoville is determined to find her would-be assassin after losing her entire family to a grenade thrown through the window at dinner and losing half her face in the process. Paoletta is an ordinary girl from an ordinary family attempting to survive in an extraordinary time. The French Revolution is in full swing, and her quest will drag her kicking and screaming through conspiracies and plots involving bloodthirsty revolutionaries and royalists alike, where she will eventually discover that her family's unremarkable appearance was nothing more than a carefully concealed façade.