Kay Boyle has long felt an urgent need to rewrite this early novel (1933) and give it a "second life." In August 1990, after two year of revision and clarifying the themes she felt were obscured by her youthful tendencies to overwrite, she read the final typescript and gave it her blessing.

This forceful story involves an English priest, Munday, defrocked for playing Poeme de l'Exstase during collection, who exiles himself to Normandy's wild countryside. Here he befriends the Cockney sailor, Ayton, a vagabond as shifty as the winds who was wanted for theft, deserted his ship, and went into hiding. Munday and Ayton become involved in an erotic relationship, causing Munday to question his whole identity.

Meanwhile, others enter the picture: a pair of squatters, brute Quespelle and his wife Leonie, followed by three Alsatian women of questionable virtue. In the end, Ayton shows his true colors and Munday is left with a revelation.