If you have read much Anthony Trollope, you have probably heard of the fictional English town of Barchester. Lovett takes us there again in the company of Arthur Prescott, named after King Arthur and obsessed with Holy Grail legends since his childhood. Now he works happily with ancient manuscripts in the Barchester Cathedral Library. Suddenly those manuscripts are threatened.
Bethany Davis, a young American, comes to Barchester to digitalize these manuscripts. In his mind, Arthur views this project as making them expendable. His suspicions gain validity when Bethany's employer, an American billionaire, makes an offer to buy the manuscripts, and the cathedral hierarchy, desperate for money, takes the offer seriously.
Bethany turns out to be a Grail enthusiast, too, and together, along with a couple of friends, they begin a quest not for the Grail itself but for a book about the Grail and an almost mythical early saint. When they find it at last, it turns out to be more than Arthur could have hoped for. And the other treasure? Why, it's Bethany's heart, to Arthur an even greater prize.
Lovett first won acclaim for his novel The Bookman's Tale, but I found this an even more rewarding tale. And his scholarship is as impressive as his writing.
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