Simon Venne, 49, resigns from his position as a history professor. There’s just too much pain and guilt in his private life. He decides to leave Montreal for New Orleans, where he meets Ruth, whose French reminds him of the way they talk in Acadie, in Eastern Canada. Their boozy, desire-tinged encounters become a cat-and-mouse game, as each jealously guards their secrets. In parallel, Tristan Malavoy recounts the story of Anne, a young woman who escaped a bloody rebellion in Santo Domingo and wound up in New Orleans in 1792, providing an opening to introduce legendary figures (Marie Laveau, Benjamin Banneker), the sorcery and melting pot of New Orleans, at once French and Spanish, black and white, brutal and surreal, its destiny as meandering as the course of the Mississippi.