Buddy (aka Benny) asserts that "even as a child I wasn't religious," that for him "a narrow, unbending logic was enough; all else was superstition." In San Francisco, Buddy is trying to distance himself from his past, and at the age of eighteen he seems to think that he has life figured out. During the course of "A Matter of Faith," he learns that there is much about life that he has not figured out, and that a "narrow, unbending logic" is not enough to explain his feelings and his strong connection to his elders.

He has moved to San Francisco to distance himself from his violent, criminal past, which he blames on "our star-struck foolish father," who broke up his marriage to Buddy's mother to marry a much younger woman. Although Buddy believes that he has come to terms with the divorce of...