Stevens Brown, now an old man, recalls the events that unfurled 50 years before in the summer of 1936 when, after a five-year absence following a fierce quarrel with his father, he had returned to his repressive hometown village of Griffin Creek (fictional town based on L'Anse-au-Griffon), located on Quebec's Gaspé peninsula. At the time, while his father, Timothé, pays little heed to his son's return, the town gratefully welcomes back the handsome and charismatic young Stevens, especially the local ladies for whom his adventures lend an irresistible air of mystery and glamour. As passions boil below the town's incestuous surface, Stevens becomes the lover of the young widow, Maureen, but his heart is firmly set on the one girl not interested in his advances, Olivia Atkins, his enchanting cousin.