For Gabriel Dublanche, the outer turnmoil of religious war and pestilence in France mirrored the base passion in his own soul: his desire for revenge against the man who murdered his best friend. So, with his beautiful wife, Celeste, Gabriel set sail for Canada, a distant, dark land of vast forest, of wild, primitive people, and of booming new cities. There, Gabriel would be brought face-to-face with an evil whose curse, it seemed, he could not escape. In a moment of blind fury, he would destroy his family's only hope for happiness.