Reinmar of Bielawa is a doctor, a magician, and, according to some, a charlatan. When a thoughtless indiscretion finds him caught in the crosshairs of a powerful noble family, he is forced to flee his home.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother's mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Paul-Émile...