The story of the tragic destiny of a cursed child, Thomas Hogan. It is a tale whose poetic charm works itself irreversibly on the reader.
William Hogan, who is to become Thomas’s father, inherits a fortune when his father dies. He buys a piece of wild and captivatingly beautiful land : two hectares of forest where wild raspberries flourish and deer graze. After squandering his fortune he works relentlessly : by day at the village sawmill and by night at the police station where he files the most sordid cases. What comes of this proximity to crime ? He is sombre, doleful and violent. But he works hard and is a good catch. One evening at the village ball he seduces the beautiful Mary and marries her. From this union Thomas is born. He is a delightful child, and unlike his father he is fragile and vulnerable. But his life is overturned the day William gashes his right hand at the sawmill. The wound becomes gangrenous and kills Thomas’s father, as there is nothing the family doctor, O’Brian, can do. From that moment on, the accident casts a shadow over Thomas’s destiny like a bad omen.
Thomas grows up and meets his friend Paul, his opposite, as strong and disobedient as he is fragile and shy, and his love, Donna, Doctor O’Brian’s admirable assistant. Soon, his dark destiny catches up with and he will become to everyone the legendary “cursed son” of Mary.
