After a rough, trouble-filled life in which he never put down roots, Abdel Ramdankétif decides to retire to the mountain village where his parents lived when they first came to France. But over the decades, everything has changed: his parents are dead and the place is practically a ghost town. Everybody’s gone except for Jacky and Monette, a neighboring couple that lives like old hermits.

Moving in, Abdel lives far from other people and from modern life, which he doesn’t give a damn about. Still, at the annual village festival, he meets a woman: Chris, a psychiatrist whose office is in the nearest city. But three months later, they break up, leaving Abdel devastated. A short time later, a supernatural event takes place, binding his fate to that of a strange family with an amazing past, leading Abdel to the verge of madness.

In his latest thriller, Nan Aurousseau, an attentive observer of his fellow human beings, explores the French provinces, without closing his eyes to the poor or the messed up, but without losing either his noir style or his sense of humor.