Welcome to the quintessential American town ("Oh beautiful for specious skies / For ambient waves of pain...").Mrs. Septimus October, a lady of vast wealth whose hobby is revolution descends with her mysterious entourage to stage her great experiment—one aimed at ridding the world of hatred by focusing it on one single individual and destroying him. Her strange cadre of agents grows amid surprising, even sinister circumstances. Her bright and terrible revolution, however, takes a turn she had not anticipated, and the novel reveals itself as a ferocious, many-leveled fable.