Diagrams

At twenty-three, Antoine Venne knows only the farm his father left behind and the quiet rhythms of rural Quebec. He has buried every restless impulse beneath duty and soil. When his mother presses an envelope of savings into his hands and tells him to go see something that matters, he boards a plane to France carrying nothing but the uneasy suspicion that he wants too much.

A cathedral in Poitiers splits his life in two.

What follows is an awakening he cannot undo: art, desire, and a magnetic...