Paris, 1889: young reporter Louis Daumale arrives in Paris, the big city where no less than modern life itself is being born.

"A little black dog with tan spots and a snout so exaggeratedly short and smushed that it seemed to exert such pressure on the sockets of its round eyes as to eject them, was nosing about the precious hems, ridiculous and endearing." As the Universal Exposition draws to a close, apprentice reporter Louis Daumale sets out the see the century. But he soon finds himself obsessed with the new dogs on the arm of every woman in Paris. Where did they come from? As the City of Lights salutes the miracles of science and the paranormal, Daumale follows his instincts and finds, beyond the joyous celebration of progress, the shape of an unsettling future for dog and man alike.