Unease and suspicion divide a small village following violence and death. Matthew Cortez is physically involved in the investigation, finding his spiritual problems have a greater depth of reality. Only in the final disastrous confrontation in a ruined Mithraic temple does he, at last, glimpse the possibility of peace.
The book was described by Antonia Fraser as an "honest and enterprising attempt to interweave the eternal and immortal longings of youth into the texture of a contemporary story".
