In A Girl's Tale, Annie Ernaux goes back in time to the season where she was overcome by someone else's will and desire 50 years previously. Ernaux, then 18 years old, gives a man her will in the summer of 1958, but after he leaves, she is left without a "master" and is helpless. Today, 50 years later, she understands she can erase the time that has passed and return to think about this young woman she had wished to utterly forget. And to learn that her writing career began here, buried in humiliation, shame, and betrayal but also in self-awareness and self-reliance.