"Banks has skillfully used his repertoire of contemporary techniques to write a novel that is classically American--a dark, but sometimes funny, romance with echoes of Poe and Melville." -- Washington Post "A marvelously written little book, fascinatingly intricate, yet deceptively simple. Well worth reading more than once." -- New York Times Book Review From acclaimed author Russell Banks comes a work of fiction utilizing a form invented in the seventeenth century by imprisoned Puritan divines Designed to be exemplary, works of this type were aimed at brethren outside the prison walls and functioned primarily as figurative dramatizations of the tests of faith all true believers must endure. These "relations," framed by scripture and by a sermon explicating the text, were usually read aloud in weekly or monthly installments during religious services. Utterly sincere and detailed recountings of suffering, they were nonetheless highly artificial. To use the form self-consciously, as Banks has done, is not to parody it so much as to argue good-humoredly with the mind it embodies, to explore and, if possible, to map the limits of that mind, the more intelligently to love it.