The Crucible of Faith

Father Palmiere is struggling in the jaded heart of middle age, laboring within a growing cynicism with no more philosophical guideposts for his diminishing life.

His once-prosperous great stone church and booming textile town are crumbling into a pit of financial ruin. His deacon is being prosecuted by an unscrupulous district attorney for supposedly assaulting a young woman. Yet his discovery of an ancient statue hidden in an isolated paradise bequeathed to the church seems to provide an opportunity to save the church and the town and the deacon...and maybe even himself.

He makes a fateful decision to bring the statue to the church grounds, embellishing its healing powers with the aid of an unethical reporter from a tacky tabloid. But the following fame of the statue leads to a worldwide religious wildfire, and the church becomes a magnet for the sincerely faithful and the sincerely faithless. The entire town becomes a seamy sideshow, a carnival of coarse delights.

Father Palmiere becomes a caricature of a ministerial man, pursuing a crass commercialism for ever more crude cash. He transforms into a huckster who loses the very vows and values and friends he had treasured the most. Eventually he yearns for a resurrection finally found in an extraordinary way--a man and a statue much more than thought to be.