When Brother Petroc is unexpectedly awoken from his 16th century tomb, he must face a 20th century world. While his Cornwall monastery remains intact-in the charge of a community of English Benedictines-there is much about the life there that is more than a little strange to him. The prayers, the duties, even the habits seem the same, but surrounded by newfangled technologies and modern sensibilities, he must grapple with the immense changes that four hundred years have wrought. With its intricate eye for detail Brother Petroc's Return is a charming and subtle exploration of the ways that faith is molded over time by the people who tend and keep it, even as those people are in turn molded by the selfsame faith. With clear-eyed medieval simplicity, Brother Petroc is an excellent mirror in which to view our modern faith, with its defects and excesses alongside its wonderfully rich developments and the ultimately timeless realities of Faith, Hope and Charity.
