[1] The books tell a tale of deception, betrayal and revenge, set in the hills of the massif de l'Étoile, near Pagnol’s home city of Marseille in southern France, in the early 20th century.

[3][4] Jean de Florette is the story of ‘le bossu’, a hunchbacked former clerk in a tax office who inherits a farm in the hills above the fictional village of La Bastide in Provence and, together with his wife and young daughter, dreams of making his fortune by raising rabbits.

However his intricate plans and hard work are constantly thwarted by a relentless drought and the deception of his neighbours, the Soubeyrans, two grasping and unprincipled farmers who block the farm's spring to trick the naïve newcomer out of his land.

He dies at exactly the moment that Manon gives birth to a son (Soubeyran's great grandson), to whom his great-grandfather has left all of his property and considerable fortune.

Pagnol said that at the age of thirteen he had heard this story from a peasant who lived in the mountains above his parents' holiday home near Aubagne (and thus near the fictional La Bastide).