The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

The novel opens with a prologue spanning three centuries of Franco-Canadian ancestry, from Evangeline LeNormand, a Parisian orphan who sailed to Nouvelle-France (New France) in 1667, to her descendant Barbara "Babs" Levesque. By 1968, fourteen-year-old Babs lives in Waterville, Maine's Little Canada, a working-class neighborhood built around the Hollingsworth & Whitney paper mill, where generations of French-speaking immigrants labored under English-speaking employers. Babs's brother Jean has recently been killed in Vietnam, and at her uncle's variety store, corrupt police officers steal merchandise with impunity.

The worst offender is Scott Markee, born Sacha Marquette, a Franco-American who changed his name, abandoned his faith, and joined the police to avoid the draft that killed Jean. When Babs confronts him, Sacha abducts and rapes her. She does not resist, deliberately letting him believe he has broken her. Afterward, she stabs him with Jean's paratrooper knife and kills him. She walks through the neighborhood covered in blood and enters Notre Dame Parish, where Father Clement Thibault, a young priest, protects her confession under the seal of the sacrament and arranges her escape to a convent in Vermont. When she returns five years later, the legend of what she did has made her the undisputed authority in Little Canada.

The story jumps to June 30, 2016. The narrator announces that Babs's younger daughter, Sis, will be murdered within a day. On this same night, Babs's older daughter, Lori, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan, overdoses on heroin in a bar bathroom and is revived with Narcan, an overdose-reversal drug. As her brain shuts down, Lori dreams of the convoy ambush in which her friend Corporal Sammy Menendez was killed beside her. A second prologue, set on September 11, 2001, reveals that Lori and Sis's older brother, also named Jean, enlisted in the Marines that day and was later killed in Iraq.

The following morning, Lori learns Sis has gone missing along with money from the family drug business. Babs runs a covert opioid operation in Little Canada with the help of a council of trusted women. She declares that Tim Talbot, son of her de facto sister Rita, must be expelled for robbing a pharmacy. When Rita protests, Babs ejects her from the council. Babs sends Lori to recover the stolen drugs. Sis's husband, Bruce Coté, who has an alcohol addiction and hits their nine-year-old son Jason, has not seen Sis for two days. Babs takes Jason into her care and beats Bruce for abusing the boy.

Meanwhile, an uncanny, emotionless enforcer known as The Man arrives in Waterville on behalf of Ogopogo, a powerful Canadian drug lord. The Man interrogates a corrupt local doctor and learns that the person who recruited him to write fake opioid prescriptions called herself Sis. He also pressures Waterville's corrupt police chief, Daryl Bates, to arrange a meeting with whoever runs the town.

Lori, battling heroin withdrawal, reconnects with Shawn Paradis, her high school love, now a financial manager in Boston. The dead appear to Lori regularly: Sammy, her father Rheal, and others materialize around her. One night she finds Sis sitting at her kitchen table, soaked and silent. Lori reaches for her sister's arm, and her hand passes through it. She realizes Sis is dead.

Lori hides the truth from Babs, knowing her mother will destroy everything in her path. She traces Sis's movements to Rex White, a meth dealer who has been exploiting Sis sexually in exchange for drugs. After confronting Rex, Lori drives to Colbert & Sons Salvage in Vassalboro and finds Sis's burned-out car with her charred remains inside. She collapses beside the vehicle, then removes Jean's locket from what is left of Sis's neck. She calls Bates to report the discovery.

State Police arrest Rex, uncovering ten other bodies on his property. Bates, Father Clement, and Lori deliver the news to Babs, who remains dry-eyed and insists Rex is not the killer.

Babs meets The Man at the abandoned mill for a tense confrontation. Her right hand shakes violently, and she acknowledges what she has been denying: She has Huntington's disease, an incurable degenerative neurological condition that killed her mother. She holds a blade to The Man's throat and demands to know about Sis. He deflects, and Babs warns him to keep Ogopogo out of her territory.

Before the Fourth of July parade, Babs discovers that Jason has scratched his own image from a family photograph, leaving everyone else intact. The sight of her grandson's self-erasure makes her weep for the first time in fifty years. During the parade, The Man appears in disguise and mouths a threat. Babs lunges at him with push daggers, short T-handled stabbing knives, and Bates tackles and arrests her. In jail, Lori extracts a promise of no more violence. Babs agrees but warns Lori to be ready to run.

At a summit behind the bowling alley, Babs, Lori, Bates, Father Clement, the council ladies, Rita, and The Man gather. The Man dictates Ogopogo's terms: The group will sell only Ogopogo's heroin, and compliance is not optional. Each person agrees. Babs objects to the wording but shakes The Man's hand. Rita has slipped a stiletto into Babs's waistband, giving Babs a concealed option, but she honors her promise and lets go. A gunshot rings out: Bruce, acting alone, shoots The Man in the neck, killing him.

Babs dispatches the ladies to leave The Man's body on a bench in Quebec City as a message to Ogopogo. She orders Bruce to take Jason and leave town. Jason, speaking fluent Québécois (Quebec French), reveals that Sis secretly taught him the language and that he has understood every private conversation around him for years. He tells Babs she is the reason his mother is dead.

Rex, from his hospital bed, insists he did not kill Sis. Lori pulls the local taxi company's logbook and discovers that on the night of her death, Sis took a cab from the salvage yard to 11 King Street: Rita's house. Rita confesses. Drunk and devastated that night over Tim's arrest and her expulsion, she threw wine in Sis's face when Sis appeared begging for help. Sis stumbled backward off the porch, struck her head on the walkway, and died instantly. Rita panicked, drove the body to the salvage yard, and set the car on fire.

Lori does not kill Rita but orders her to stand beside Babs and let Babs die believing she had one person she could always count on. Babs enters Notre Dame Parish for the first time since 1968 and goes to confession with Father Clement.

Ogopogo dispatches mercenaries toward Waterville. As wildfire reaches Little Canada, Lori enters Babs's house one last time and embraces her mother. Babs tells her to take the cash hidden under the dryer and to explain everything to Jason someday. She has rigged the house with five hundred pounds of TNT wired to a dead-man's switch on her shotgun: Releasing the trigger will detonate the explosives. After Lori departs, Babs and Rita sit together for one final night, drinking and playing cribbage. When they hear Ogopogo's men entering the basement, the two women take up their guns.

In an epilogue set two years later, Lori and Shawn have a daughter, Evangeline Barbara Paradis. Lori speaks only French to her from birth. After the couple separates, Lori drives Evangeline to Waterville, past the scorched lot where Babs's house once stood, and then to St. John's French Immersion School, the project Babs spent decades building. Children in uniforms speak French on the playground. Lori tells Evangeline, in French, that she will attend this school, and she will know exactly who she is.