Forty years after the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter
Miller returns to a world struggling to transcend a terrifying legacy of
darkness, as one man undertakes an odyssey of adventure and discovery
that promises to alter the destiny of humankind . . . .
Isolated in Leibowitz Abbey, Brother Blacktooth St. George suffers a
crisis of faith, torn between his vows and his Nomad upbringing, between
the Holy Virgin and visions of the Wild Horse Woman of his people. At
the brink of disgrace and expulsion from his order, the young monk is
championed by a powerful cardinal who has plans for him. Blacktooth sets
out on a journey across a landscape still scarred by the long-ago Flame
Deluge, a land divided by nature, politics, and war. He will find
horrors and wonders, sins of the flesh . . . and love. As he encounters
and reencounters a beautiful but forbidden mutant named Ædrea, he begins
to wonder: is a she-devil, the Holy Mother, or the Wild Horse Woman
herself?