(Apollonian Press) In this novel’s foreword, the author writes, “In the year 1979 the Episcopal Church did the inexplicable, if not the inexpiable: the Church abandoned its time-honored, foundational Book of Common Prayer.” This “literary masterpiece” was set aside “for a so-called modern collection of liturgies couched in the speech of mall and marketplace.” Out of the author’s reaction to that 1979 decision, he wrote this tale. An aficionado of Southern history and the Civil War, Conquest also is the author of other novels, including The Gun and Glory of Granite Hendley, a collection of three blank-verse plays, and a volume of poetry, Lays and Legends of Virginia and Otherwhere.
