Robert Detweiler, professor of comparative literature at Emory University, uses in this book 12 contemporary fictional works to explore the religious concerns which underlie some of the deepest rifts in our society. In the first section, titled "The Body Politic," he looks at the Rosenberg trial and execution as a means of examining public accusation and confession. He deciphers the religious undertow of E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel, Robert Coover's The Public Burning, and Arthur Miller's play The Crucible.
In his probe of "The Body Erotic," Detweiler discusses six novels in which women struggle with their faith in situations where their bodies are abused. Included here are Toni Morrison's Beloved and Ron Hansen's Mariette in Ecstasy. The final section, "The Body Apocalyptic," uses the 1890 massacre of Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee and the Vietnam War as launch pads for a probe of American violence and hatred of the other. Here he assesses the film Apocalypse Now, Philip Caputo's Indian Country, and Louise Erdrich's Tracks. Detweiler's intellectual assessment of the interplay between fiction, religion, and the public sphere is thought provoking.