A blank voice in the middle of the night tells Michael Ferrier of the deaths of his friend Francois and his daughter Bahia. In the following devastation, speech resumes and memories return: how two young loners meet and connect, their years of study, their passion for cinema and radio. Memories unfold and gradually come together in a chronicle of friendship and a memorial to a lost friend.

Francois, Portrait of an Absent Friend is both an elegy to a friend and a wonderfully delicate, poetic look at friendship in general. Ferrier tells us how friendships are formed, how they are lost, how they are maintained, and what happens when they are taken from us. From Paris to Japan, Ferrier transports us to the writer's time and the place as we feel the pain, the bitterness, and the longing left by Francois' death.