In financial crisis, a man looks back to the life of his grandfather for lessons about how to accept and overcome his problems. Abbevillesweeps through the history of the late 19th through the early 21st century American - among loggers stripping the North Woods bare, at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, with French soldiers at the Battle of Verdun, into the abyss of the Depression and finally toward the new Millennium's own nightmares. At the same time it examines life at it most intimate. How can one hold onto meaning amidst the brutally indifferent cycles of was and peace, flood and drought, boom and bust, life and death?