In 1963, twenty-three-year-old Annie Erno discovers that she is pregnant. In France at that time, abortion was prohibited. “The Event,” written forty years later, tells of several months during which she hid the pregnancy from her parents, sought help from friends and doctors, and tried in vain to have an abortion with a knitting needle. The story, told in brutal simplicity of fact, shows us a society of taboos and class prejudices, where the heroine's experience becomes an initiation. Drawing on diary entries and memory, meticulously building a dual perspective, Erno selects new meaning for lived experience.