Doctor Pascal concludes Zola's epic Rougon-Macquart series. Pascal has spent his thirty years as a physician cataloging his family and identifying their often unedifying exploits as the specific results of heredity and innateness. His niece at first believes this work to be an arrogant denial of God's omnipotence, but as Pascal reveals the details of the Rougon-Macquart family tree to her, she begins to see the value in his work.

Regarded by critics as one of the highest pinnacles of achievement in Emile Zola's literary career, L'Assommoir (best translated as "the cheap liquor store") offers an unflinching look at alcoholism among the working class in nineteenth-century France. Part of a larger, 20-volume story cycle that spanned Zola's entire career, L'Assommoir was the novel that initially propelled the writer to fame and fortune.