Thomas Pichon seems forever at a crossroads, often choosing the path of least resistance, or the most tempting. In this, the third Thomas Pichon novel, his life remains more complicated than he wishes. He encounters highwaymen on a country road, succumbs to a tempting tryst in the spa town of Bath, squanders a new love in London and longs for the higher social station he once enjoyed. Returning to Paris, Thomas's work life initially stalls, but a new lover offers help. He is given the best position he has ever had, one that requires him to go overseas. The crossing is a voyage neither he nor anyone aboard will soon forget.

Getting what he wants turns Thomas's world upside down, forcing him to start over - again.

Life is not as good or easy as Thomas Pichon imagined as a 12-year old in early-18th-century Normandy. Inclined to poetry and religious/erotic imaginings, he is an office clerk, aspires to be a writer and is a part-time spy for the police. But his careers advance too slowly, and he takes comfort and release with prostitutes. A courtesan brings a new possibility and Thomas wants to have his cake and eat it too. Award-winning Canadian author A.J.B. Johnston has published more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles about 18th-century French colonial history in Acadia. A Chevalier of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Johnston applied his considerable sense of French history to imagine Thomas Pichon’s life. Johnston lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Historical, biographical fiction.