The buzzing grew louder, and he was lost in it. He was part of the rush, the wind, the motion he tried to capture in his two-dimensional canvases. He was joining it, he was a part of it, there was no separation between him and anything else.

A tormented artist arrives in a village in southern France to begin painting again. He stands before a house with blue shutters, hoping the change of scenery and brilliant colors of the countryside will calm the buzzing in his mind.

Madame Sorel, a formidable widow, runs a respectable and orderly boarding house. She finds this artist puzzling. Weighed down with canvas, easel, and a sailcloth bag filled with brushes and paints, he hurries out in his shabby clothing each morning, leaving a trace of footprints on the dusty street. His presence stirs something in her, something held back for many years.

Others in the village befriend the artist, including Gretchen, the young housekeeper guided by her tender feelings for the painter, and Luc, the salt-of-the-earth farmer who hides his demons behind amiability and hard work. No one understands the artist—what he sees, how he paints, or why he stays—and their confusion increases as he becomes increasingly erratic, plagued by forces growing out of his control. As his time in the village hurtles toward a stunning, fateful end, all those touched by his visions are altered forever.

A bold exploration of the encompassing drive of creativity, the power of art, and the bonds of community and friendship, Madame Sorel’s Lodger explores what it means to follow or hide your heart and how these choices, in the end, are what make us human.