When bombs rock Montreal, a domestic political conflict over a renewed call for Quebec independence quickly becomes an international terrorist threat with political repercussions reaching from Parliament Hill to the White House and from a provincial farmhouse to the weekend retreat of the French president. Two former college roommates, now in positions of influence in Ottawa and Washington, seek to connect the dots and so convince their superiors of the danger of a rogue state emerging on America’s unprotected northern flank. In Ottawa, Defense Minister Andrew Fraser’s efforts are complicated by his beautiful French-Canadian wife, Marie-Paule, who sees his career as competition. At the White House, National Security Council staffer Mark Rayberg stumbles across an intriguing coincidence of times and dates as he inquires into a shadowy Middle Eastern banker’s influence with an opportunistic French president. Could an effort to rewrite history be underway? Meanwhile, in a tiny border village far removed from any power center, bachelor farmer Fernand St. Germaine’s infatuation with Marie-Paule makes him a central, tragic figure in a conspiracy that begins to unfold one autumn evening at the Stanstead border crossing from Vermont.