It's 1960 in the Mali Federation, and a young boy steals a 14th-century statue of a Red Mother and Child from French colonials who were looting the country of cultural artifacts before it gained its independence. He hides it for safekeeping.

It's 2015 in Mali, and a young man is gathering honey from a baobab tree when Islamic extremists assault him and destroy the tree -- revealing, in the process, the same statue, which has lain hidden all these years.

Also in 2015, but in the Louvre in Paris, France, curators are discussing some of the tribal art in their keeping -- and the moral implications of showcasing cultural treasures from around the world, even as many of the cultures represented are struggling to survive. One item of particular interest is a statue very similar to the Red Mother, already residing among the Louvre's tribal collection. Not far away, hundreds of African refugees live in a rough camp, hoping to find new lives away from their war-torn nations of origin.

Alou, the honey-gatherer, takes the statue to an elder, who was in fact the young boy in 1960 who stole the statue and hasn't seen it since. While he fought then to keep it out of French hands, he now believes the Louvre is the safest place for the statue to survive the destructive tendencies of the extremists. Giving Alou all the money he has, he sends the young man on a long and perilous journey to ensure the statue's safekeeping.

This is my first taste of NBM's Louvre collection, a series of graphic novels described by Karen Green, of Comixology, thusly:

Setting comics creators loose in the Louvre, and then letting a story come to them that is inspired by the works they come across. One of the premiere cultural institutions in the WORLD decided that it would be a great idea to create a "lasting bridge" between their artworks and the world of comics-and their readers. That's just huge.

Browsing through the NBM catalogue shows that some very varied ideas have been spawned from that collaboration. This book, written and illustrated by Christian Lax, touches on many issues, from the plight of migrants to the enduring value of art and its place in museums. The illustrations are expressive and highly detailed, drawing on a drab palette -- mostly grays and beiges -- to better offset the muted red of the Mother and Child.

The story raises some questions that it doesn't try too hard to answer -- leaving, I assume, the readers to draw their own conclusions. By book's end, I was more unsettled than inspired -- which may well have been Lax's intent.

Red Mother with Child is well worth reading, and I suspect the other titles in the Louvre collection would be worth exploring, too.