A parable of good and evil . The stranger is haunted by a tragic past and arrives in the little village carrying a fortune in gold and accompanied by the devil. He confronts the youngest person of the village, the Chantal Prym of the title with his proposition. A test - the villagers must commit an evil act, a murder, to receive the reward - the gold. The test is to prove or unprove his thesis that "given the right set of circumstances every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil". Chantal must decide to tell the village of the awful test, and fight her own temptation to simply take the gold and escape the stifling village. The tension builds as she and the villagers decide their actions and Coelho skillfully keeps the final outcome totally hidden until the end.