France is drowned under a torrential storm which gives it airs, on this last day of 1999, of the end of the world. Alexandre, reclusive in his farm in Lot where he grew up with his three sisters, seems to fear the arrival of the gendarmes more. Alone in the dark night, he will relive the end of another world, the last days of this peasant and withdrawn life which seemed to him immutable as a child. Between man and nature, the relationship has continued to grow strained. Whose fault is it ? In this great novel of "human nature", Serge Joncour orchestrates almost thirty years of national history in which the progress, struggles, political life and successive catastrophes which have marked the end of the 20th century meet to the point of dizziness, hitting head-on a French family. By offering our contemporary world the complex radiography of his childhood, he teaches us beautifully about our humanity in danger. Unless nature comes to take back some of its rights ...