The Patience of A Saint opens in medias res with Red confessing to Fr.

Blackie Ryan the confusion into which his life has fallen since his ecstatic experience "on the Road to Damascus."

The short introductory chapter is filled with literary allusions which set the stage for the tale which is about to unfold. Allusions not only to the story of St. Paul, but also to Dante, Thoreau, Thurber, the Book of Job, Peter's Denial of Jesus Christ, and Shakespeare's version of Julius Caesar fill the two pages which precede the flashback to the actual opening of the story.

The chronological story line begins and ends with Red Kane's attendance at Mass. At the beginning of the novel he attends Old St. Patrick's on the Feast of All Saints, 1983, all by himself, as a way of marking the fifteenth anniversary of the death of his brother in Vietnam...