No sooner does freshly minted Reverend Beau Dillard answer his calling to Resurrection House than he gets wind of his immediate predecessor having been found dead, wedged amongst some pilings in the Minatree River Basin. Understandably unnerved by this too-close-to-home revelation, Beau is nonetheless deftly neutralized by the fervid attentiveness of his direct boss, Kathy Symes Cantrell, Mother Superior of this Diocesan Hospice for Troubled Young Ladies. In due course, however, her unshakable faith in the end justifying whatever means, irrespective of the corruption required to get there, convinces him she is either the most brilliant person he has ever encountered or plainly certifiable.

Were it not for the aid and comfort given him his his mentor, the powerful diocesan cardinal Rector, as well as knowing that he is adhering faithfully to his revered Bishop's mandate, Beau might have been spared. But no, not until the sun is about to set does he at last catch on, too late, that he and these two men of the cloth, in the truest sense churchly role models both, are not, and indeed may never have keen on the same page. And so, he holds fast to the standards inculcated in him at Benedictus, to the point of no return. Nonetheless, at journey's end, he knows what he must do, and does it.