In 1953, a teenage girl, Jeanne Saré, jumps in front of a train at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. She leaves behind writings that to some are unreadable, but to others tell universal, unspoken truths about the lives and struggles of women. When published in the 1970s, her work triggers a rash of copycat suicides. It is withdrawn from sale and eventually forgotten about.

Then, in 2004, two women from opposite corners of the globe — Amsterdam and Sydney — rediscover Jeanne Saré’s book and set out to discover who the author was and what happened to her.

So many women across the ages have attached their own stories to Saré’s, often with devastating results, but the truth about her may be even stranger than the fictions they have invented.