France of the 19th century. Young Sobran, the son of a winemaker, meets an angel who looks like Jesus Christ. And everything in Sobran’s life is going well: he inherits his father’s winery and marries the girl of his dreams. But the angel turns out to be fallen. The winemaker goes crazy, his wife is damaged in her mind, and several brutal murders of young girls are committed in the province... A subtle intriguing novel immerses the reader in the unknown world of desire and rage, passion and mortal jealousy, sexual pleasure and shame, a kind of fidelity. The writer Elizabeth Knox is well known in New Zealand, and this is her first book to gain worldwide fame.