An unemployed crime reporter and recovering alcoholic, he has finally come back to Hochelaga, the working class Montreal neighbourhood where he grew up. Through a series of minor mishaps, he arrives home one night, just minutes after his apartment building has been torn apart by an explosion that claims six lives. Three times divorced and six months sober, Gérard is wracked by survivor guilt. Questions torment him: why did his neighbours die and not him? Is there any sense to this event? Does life itself have any meaning? In seeking to answer the unanswerable, Gérard's old investigative instincts are reborn, as is his attraction to the bottle, and he embarks on a journey both geographical and existential.