Carolina Fonçeca is a lonely sixteen-year-old girl confined to a remote Brazilian sugar plantation in the 1850s. Her life changes when the French explorer, naturalist and diplomat, the Count de Castelnau stumbles out of the Amazon rainforest, delirious and near death. With a head full of Balzac and dreams of Parisian life, she nurses him back to health and makes the decision to follow him back to Paris as his lover. What Carolina doesn’t know is that François has a wife and son back in France.

The Natural History of Love is a meticulously researched work of historical fiction based on the lives of the Count de Castelnau and Carolina Fonçeca. From their first meeting in the Brazilian jungle to the Salons of Paris and eventually to Federation-era Melbourne, and against the backdrop of a time when Darwin's theories were transforming society, this is a fascinating story, masterfully told.

In this episode Gregory Dobbs chats to Caroline Petit about recreating a grand love story from dusty files and letters, the collision between religion, black magic and the natural sciences, and giving a voice to a remarkable woman silenced by the annals of 19th century history.