David Plante was born and brought up in a French-speaking Catholic parish in Providence, Rhode Island. The nuns wore black veils and taught the children that they lived in le petit Canada, where they preserved the beliefs of le grand Canada. His part-Blackfoot father was stoic and silent, his mother lively but trapped, and at the center of their difficult lives was a deep, dark God.The ghosts of the parish haunted Plante long after he left home, lost his belief in any god, and found the center of his life both in love and in writing. Finally, Plante comes to terms with his dark God by coming to terms with his ancestryβa stunning spiritual and physical journey that brings him back to Providence, to Canada, to France, and finally to a new understanding of God.β[A] self-scouring undertaken with resolute frankness and considerable stylistic grace.β βSven Birkerts, New York Times Book ReviewβRemarkable. And memorable.β βDavid M. Shribman, Globe and Mail (Canada)β[Plante] offers a strange, mysterious, and deeply hopeful sense of spiritual possibility.β βCommonwealβEmotionally disturbing and spiritually exhilarating.β βSam Coale, Providence Journal βThis wonderful book takes on what may be the hardest questions by allowing this most observant individual to see and hear in miraculous detail. How, it asks, does any person become American, let alone find a place in the breathing cathedral that is this majestic universe?β βJane Vandenburgh, Boston Globe