by Georges Simenon (Author)
Patrick Martin Ashbridge, a lawyer who has gained the trust of the wealthy class of Tumacacori, on the United States border with Mexico, receives an unexpected visit from his younger brother Donald, a fugitive who was serving a sentence for an assassination attempt, a weak man irresponsible and yet endowed with a strange power of persuasion. The arrival of the fugitive, who hopes to cross the border taking advantage of the rising Rio Grande with the merciless storms of the rainy season, will alter the tranquility of the small community of ranchers and will confront the two brothers, who will debate between love and hatred, resentment and guilt. In this landscape as inexorable as destiny, whose social and historical reality remains unchanged, Simenon concocts one of his most notable romans durs, the first of his American period, where he recreates a complex family plot.