From National Book Award-winning writer James Carroll comes a novel
of the timeless love story of Peter Abelard and Héloïse, and its impact
on a modern priest and a Holocaust survivor seeking sanctuary in
Manhattan.
Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked when he sees a friend from his
seminary days at the altar of his humble parish in upper Manhattan--a
friend who was forced to leave under scandalous circumstances. Compelled
to reconsider the past, Father Kavanagh wanders into the medieval haven
of the Cloisters and stumbles into a conversation with a lovely and
intriguing docent, Rachel Vedette.
Having survived the Holocaust and escaped to America, Rachel remains
obsessed with her late father's greatest scholarly achievement: a study
demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk
Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars. Feeling an odd connection with Father
Kavanagh, Rachel shares with him the work that cost her father his life.
At the center of these interrelated stories is the classic romance
between the great philosopher Abelard and his intellectual equal,
Héloïse. For Rachel, Abelard is the key to understanding her people's
place in history. And for Father Kavanagh, the controversial theologian
may be a doorway to understanding the life he himself might have had
outside the Church.
