"In 1963, North Carolina poet Henry Beam publishes a collection of poems, claiming they had been saved from a Nazi death camp. The accusations of plagiarism that follow cost Henry his university teaching position and force him into decades of silence. Thirty-four years after their publication, he breaks that silence by telling grad student Rachel Singer about his year in Paris: how he naïvely became entangled with fiery right-wing politician Renard Marcotte, his love affair with the shop girl Eugénie, and his unnerving encounter with the enigmatic René, the man who supposedly gave Henry the disputed poems. As Rachel wonders how much is true, Henry's story forces her to examine her own life and the secret she has never acknowledged"--Page 4 of cover.