Translated from the Italian, Zanonni's fable recalls Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Wind in The Willows as it recounts the experiences of Archy, a beech marten whose mother trades him for the price of one-and-a-half hens to Solomon, a fox known as the Lender. Solomon's greatest treasure is the written word--and particularly the word of God--and as he develops a more complex relationship with Archy, the tale explores questions of morality and what it means to be human and/or animal through the creature's shift from instincts to judgment, all under an overarching Divinity--though not, perhaps, for the better.