When Jacqueline Floriot’s husband, Louis, finds her in the arms of another man, she and her lover flee the house. Two years later, Jacqueline returns, hoping to reunite with her young son, Raymond. But Louis, overcome with jealous rage, sends her out into the cold of winter without so much as a glimpse of her child. His merciless act sets off a tragic chain of events as Jacqueline sinks into a life of depravity, drugs, and prostitution.
 
Twenty years later, Raymond is a lawyer, working alongside his father. When he finds himself representing a woman accused of murder, a woman known only as Madame X, he has no way of knowing that he defends his own mother—or that she may have committed her alleged crime out of love for her son.
 
Based on Alexandre Bisson’s 1908 play of the same name, J. W. McConaughy’s novel brilliantly depicts a harrowing tale.