This book recounts a few days in the life of Henry, a young boy of thirteen, depressed, convinced of being unloved within his family and having no friends: in question, his unsightly features, earning him a gloomy and uninteresting existence, made of mockery. So he runs away and takes refuge in the “ forest of dead trees ”, a devastated place that his grandfather introduced him to during a walk.
 Fascinated by this cursed place, ravaged, mutilated, by a nameless war, where men beyond themselves, driven mad, killed each other for glory, he takes pleasure in dreaming of ultimate sacrifices, which fascinates, as much by the idea of death, as that of a vain heroism which we can imagine frozen in a destructive apocalypse; or others see only death and desolation in this ravaged landscape, he delights in seeing a resurrection from the dead. There Henry meets a small abandoned black and white dog with whom a morbid but deep friendship forms, which despite everything he thinks will save them...
 Of his inner journey, shared between paranoia and reasonableness; of his slow descent towards madness, he only feels the beginnings of it ; of the endless precipice yawning before him, he only has an intuition of it.