La Foudre by Pierric Bailly | P.O.L.

La Foudre is a novel of amorous passion and stupefaction. It is also a novel that is in the tradition of American nature writing. John, the narrator, in his thirties, is berger in the Haut-Jura. Every year, he spends five months in an alpine chalet to look after a flock of sheep. He roamed the beech and spruce forests of the valley, and came across all kinds of wild animals: foxes, chamois, lynx.

John discovers in the newspaper a news item involving a certain Alexandre Perrin, accused of murder. Alexandre, his high school ami , who became a veterinarian, ecologist and animal rights activist, killed one of his neighbours, a young twenty-year-old hunter. A fight that went wrong. Alexandre was arrested and placed in pre-trial detention. John, troubled, will leave his refuge and try to find out more. He makes contact with Nadia, Alexandre's wife, with whom he was also in high school. He then finds himself drawn into an unexpected passionate story that will turn his life upside down.

Alexandre is in prison and awaiting trial. His crime pushes John to revisit his youthful years. They are happy with Héloïse, his partner, with whom John was planning to settle in Reunion Island. However, the murder committed by his ami and his budding complicity with Nadia will take him where he never imagined he would go. Nadia awakens something in him that seemed buried, she revives his desire. It feels like a rebirth. Also, his plans with Héloïse seem more and more improbable to him. The guilt of his ami turns into an obsession for him, as his desire for Nadia grows. He follows the hearing at the court in Lyon, leaves Héloïse and stays in the Jura while living his love affair with Nadia. Until the day Alexandre gets out of prison and reunites with his wife and children to whom John has become attached. The situation becomes critical and stormy, while Nadia seems to be moving away from him.