Enter a pivotal week in the life of Saul St. Pierre. The disenfranchised eighteen-year-old high school student has just learned that his estranged mother, Helena St. Pierre, a famous folksinger who had abandoned him in infancy, has committed suicide in Thailand. Helena's death occurs just as the St. Pierres are experiencing a revival in popularity owing to a remake of their one big hit by a Marxist hip-hop group from Germany, and at the same time as two ardent admirers of the St. Pierres have landed on his slothful father's doorstep. In the course of a week, from the day Saul hears of Helena's death until the day she is buried, the world will come calling on the suburban Vancouver home he longs to flee. Journalists, filmmakers, aging folkies, German post-punk bands, protestors for hire, native rights activists, literary agents and VJs will converge—all of them hungry for a glimpse of tragic celebrity. Meanwhile, Saul will be swept up in a book ban protest at school, leading a student walkout over a book he hasn't even read. Funny and inspired, Baroque-a-nova tells a coming-of-age story that finds truth and beauty in a strip-mall wasteland. It tells an unforgettable tale of love, forgiveness and the power of a book to change one's life.