How does a postmodern, rational person fit the irrational, the supernatural, into her life and still make some kind of sense of it?—Not easily.
The Communion of the Saint is about people of faith in the postmodern world—people who are rational and thoughtful yet find that they can’t ignore the claim of something beyond what they can see and touch.
Clio Griffin, an unemployed American historian gets a last-chance job in England, as the pet historian for a group of antiquarians who want to promote their patron saint. Clio is a thorough-going rationalist, so the worst possible thing happens: she starts hearing a voice, and it soon turns out to be the voice of the town’s saint, Alban, the first martyr of Britain. Worse yet, she gets proof that what she’s hearing is real. She can’t escape the fact that someone she doesn’t believe can exist is talking to her.
Then Alban yanks her against her will into the past, where she experiences history in ways that no historian has ever done. She relives his execution, a battle between Picts and the British, the life of a young nun with leprosy, and a host of other pasts—all of which makes her fear for her own sanity each time she returns to her own life in the present.