A grieving, nameless narrator attempts to reconcile his fractured identity following the deaths of his wife and his charismatic mentor. The protagonist navigates a landscape of intense sexual obsession and spiritual longing, haunted by the presence of a 17th-century Mohawk saint. His internal struggle is defined by the loss of his primary relationships and a desperate search for meaning within a chaotic, non-linear reality. The narrative framework utilizes fragmented flashbacks and surrealist prose to mirror the narrator's deteriorating mental state and his fixation on the intersection of the sacred and the profane.

This novel is widely regarded as a polarizing artifact of 1960s counterculture, celebrated for its linguistic audacity and refusal to adhere to traditional narrative constraints. Readers often note the challenging nature of the prose, which demands a high level of engagement with its dense, often hallucinatory imagery. The work is frequently analyzed for its bold synthesis of Canadian history, religious iconography, and the raw, unvarnished exploration of human desire. It remains a significant, if divisive, entry in the author's body of work, consistently cited for its stylistic fearlessness and its enduring capacity to provoke intense reactions from its audience.