In 1885, two lesbian widows (Annie and Euphémie) and a precocious young boy (Auguste) are forced by murderous circumstances to flee their French village. Further circumstances--and a quartet of missionaries representing a Christian sect/cult that celebrates solemnity--stow them away within the Statue of Liberty's head on a trans-Atlantic steamer that arrives in New York after a surviving a giant narwhal that has reduced the Solemnitic missionaries from a quartet to a trio. The remaining Solemnites invite the French immigrées to southern Indiana live in their idyllic village that forbids all forms of pleasure, with the exception of whistling whilst one works. In spite of various hi-jinks and apostatic misunderstandings (the latter motivated primarily by young Auguste's adoration of his philosophical namesake, Auguste Comte) The widows and the boy become fully integrated into the village. Certain delicate subjects, including the decidedly un-Solemnitic relationship between the two widows, are avoided altogether...until they aren't. Which becomes the case once Solemn is tapped as the host-village for the 1885 All-Tent Revival. The revival calls itself a "multi-denominational marketplace for God", but an alternative tag line could be "a time-bomb composed of two-hundred rival factions of late-19th-century American crack-pot religious sects." Call it an inspirational, satirical, cross-Atlantic anthem to just a few of the things that America can't always bring itself to stand for: Liberté, Egalité, and Sororité.
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