In the spring of 1900, Henry Church—inventor, amateur ornithologist, and performer of puppet theatricals for the local children—is living in a beautiful house by a river, outside a small Ontario town. But his happiness is undermined by the growing distance of his wife, the beautiful and enigmatic Margaret, who takes solitary night swims in the river to ease the mysterious pains in her legs. Henry's life is shattered by the arrival in town of a Russian performing strongman named Count Anatole Belinsky. When Margaret runs off with the count, Henry pursues them to Europe, where he takes up a precarious existence among the underclass and anarchists of Paris. His need to find Margaret again, and to understand the truth about her, will not let him rest and sends him into new and uncharted territories of emotional discovery.