An impassioned novel on the consequences of sexual exploitation and the dead ends of forgiveness 13-year-old Cleo lives a drab existence with her parents in a suburb of Paris. Her life changes when she is offered the chance to obtain a scholarship - issued by a mysterious Foundation - to realise her dream and become a modern jazz dancer. But there is more to the Foundation and their suave representative than meets the eye. Soon Cleo finds a trap has closed in on her, and she's fallen prey to a sinister system in which she'll eventually become complicit. Over 30 years later, a cache of images surfaces on the internet and exposes the Foundation's exploitative, hidden purposes. The police put out a call for witnesses, and Cleo, now with a successful career as a dancer behind her, comes to realise the past has come back to haunt her. As her sense of self diffracts into multiple, contrasting images, there's no way out but to confront her double burden as victim and predator.

We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm is a wild novel that oscillates between fiction and reality. The story centers on two young women: Voltairine, a dancer who no longer dances but whose body is still haunted by the movement of dance, and her soulmate Emile, a young woman recovering from unexpected cardiac arrest. The girls are inseparable, and both their lives have been shattered by the horror of rape. The opening of the dreamlike novel sets a bleak stage as Voltairine watches Emile lying in a hospital bed, her temperature dropping to dangerous levels. Voltairine is filled with sorrow and faces the blunt reality that her soulmate is going to die, chronicling each minute in her diary. However, Emile ultimately survives the attack. Later, at the cinematheque, Voltairine and Emile meet a young girl, whom they call "the little girl at the end of the lane," who is obsessed by the Haymarket Affair of 1886. She's an odd girl, obsessed with words, scribbling pages of notes throughout the movie screenings. She helps draw the pair out of their state of painful helplessness, and eventually the trio openly rebels against the newly elected oppressive regime of barbarian kings who rule their society. We Are the Birds of the Coming Storm explores repression, revolt, and madness, telling a story that is not only revolutionary but also cautionary-of three women who let their spirits fly like birds as the daunting storm ascends.