Intrigued with the bossy, anxious, and energetic woman and lacking anywhere else to go, he accepts. She, assuming that he was a foreigner, invites him to work as a farmhand for reasonable pay, room, and board. In the course of his aimless wandering, he encounters Tati on a crowded city bus, and follows her home. Released on a spat of lies and legal technicalities, he has recently finished a five year sentence in prison. He killed a man, and but for the wit of his lawyer he would have been decapitated as a result. Jean Passerat-Monnoyeur is the disowned son of a wealthy brewer. Tati is not foolish, however, and she sexually sedates their father frequently using sex as a means of ensuring his favor (as one would ensure the love of a dog by giving it treats). The sisters of her deceased husband desire the farmhouse for themselves, and have begun charting legal channels to achieve this end. Her trouble-making son Rene is away at war, and her aged and confused father-in-law helps her tend the animals. Tati Couderc is a somewhat portly widow who has inherited a lovely house and plot of land from her husband. Simenon masterfully paints the turmoil of a recently paroled murderer who is searching for his place in a world that refuses to accept him, and contrasts it with the plight of an anxious widow whose family is plotting against her. The prose is beautiful (even in translation), and the lovely descriptions create a picturesque backdrop for despicability the dregs of sin. The entire work is laced with the troubling desires of emotionally and spiritually deranged characters. The Widow by Georges Simenon was published in 1942 and is an exquisite piece of french noir crime fiction.