Anisette Durande holds the destiny of a free Brittany in her hands - desperate to keep the Madonna Rosa from the Germans as the Nazi onslaught rolls across defenseless France in 1940. She is La Guardienne - the last of a line of women descended from a lone survivor of a terrible slaughter, blessed to protect the ancient Madonna carved from the crucifix of the Christian martyrs of Roman Lyon. Her only hope - a chance encounter with a young British soldier on the road, himself fleeing the Germans toward an evacuation port on the Brittany coast. Scotty promises to return the Madonna to her - somehow ... yet becomes lost in the chaos and tragedy about to unfold in St. Nazaire.