A modernizing American has assumed the papal throne. One of His first acts is to select a seventeenth century priest for canonization. The Congregation for the Causes of the Saints recoils in horror at the new pontiff's choice. Against abackdrop of Vatican intrigue and infighting, a long-unsolved crime comes to the attention of a retired detective. The forces that contribute to it reach far back into the distant past. No one can truly fathom the life of the candidate for sainthood including the nun and priest who join forces to prepare the submission to Rome."

"Think of a city whose inhabitants respect more than each other and their own interests. Its destruction would not be a crime against humanity but a crime against life. They might not bomb such a city. "There is no moral reason for humanity to continue, if its ends are limited to itself. And this is how we must stop seeing ourselves. This is why we destroy each other. If we disregard the life around us, why should we not be equally disregarded?" - Mura, a young performance artist, in The Wild Horses of Hiroshima An American medic, Jonathan Springborne, wounded in the Pacific theatre and...

Sometimes the truth is unbearable. Illusion, for awhile, is preferable. Such is the calculation that the young writer makes for those whom he does not wish to damage. Sparagmos, meaning the dismemberment of a victim, is intended in this memoir to apply in the original Greek sense of "tearing apart" as can occur to one's consciousness - spiritual, emotional, and psychological - when under assault.

Sometimes things go too far and the game gets out of hand. One discovers that secret desires can be not so good when they become real. Luckily the wave that carries the boy away is a horse that has some experience of the deep sea.