In 1998, Fernanda Eberstadt, her husband, and their two small children moved from New York to an area outside Perpignan, France — a city with one of the largest Gypsy populations in Western Europe. Here she found a jealously guarded culture, a society made, in part, of lawlessness and defiance of non-Gypsy norms, and she met MoÏse Espinas, the lead singer of the Gypsy band, Tekameli. As her relationship with the Espinas family developed over the years, progressing from mutual bafflement to a deep-rooted friendship, Eberstadt found herself a part of the captivating Gypsy life-a life rich with tradition and culture, but slowly being consumed by the modern world.