Paul Thibodeaux is a handsome, laid-back young man married to Colette, the most beautiful woman in the small Louisiana town where they grew up. For Paul, life is complete, with a wife he loves, machines to repair, and a lively local dance hall. But Colette wants more, and when she sets off for California in search of a better life, Paul follows her there and back, waiting to see if she'll change her mind about him and their life together. How they come to realize the importance of their marriage makes for a novel that is at once an adventure story, a love story, and an elegiac portrait of a place and a culture rarely explored in contemporary fiction.