Johnny Fehr is a Mennonite Christian working as a salesman and living in a Canadian small town called Lesser, close to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The scandal breaks open into the society and with turn of events Johnny loses his family of wife and children, his lover and also his few close friends.

Coming from orthodox thoughts, people start treating him like a sinner but Johnny wishes to still live with grace and dignity.

As the lead character of the novel also belongs to Manitoba, The Toronto Star noted that Bergen's Mennonite upbringing has influenced his writing for the novel.

[7] American novelist Claire Messud in her New York Times review mentions that through novel "David Bergen explores what happens when the simplest of contemporary souls asks the biggest questions, and the novel, as rigorously unpretentious as its hero, attests to the ambiguities of the undertaking".