The novel recounts the upheaval in a Normandy district on the eve of the Revolution, centering on a parish priest whose life and community are altered by debates over a Constitutional Church and the shifting relations between Church and State. It depicts rural landscapes and a manufacturing town around a Benedictine abbey, traces local reactions to reform and revolutionary ideals, and portrays clerical divisions and lay sentiments that sustain religion through violent years. The narrator balances sympathy for moderate reform and the National Assembly with criticism of revolutionary excesses, using historical incidents and composite characters to illustrate conflicting loyalties and moral complexities.