"Give me your sorrows. Give me your needings...I will take them from you..." In a muddy field in Faulkner, Illinois, a crowd has come to see the smooth-cheeked boy in a makeshift canvas tent—the boy whose stern father claims he can work a peculiar kind of miracle. "And you will be mine." Our worst secrets, our darkest pain, our weakness and shame—the hollow part of us—these he takes upon himself, leaving behind a strange white light of peace and contentment. What grows in that eerie human light? While word of his power spreads and hundreds are "reborn," two people remain impervious to Paul's power. A priest and a young woman reporter come face-to-face with a nightmare. Relieved of guilt, steeped in self-acceptance, Paul's followers are possessed by a strange new evil no one can control: a living, breathing, palpitating evil freed to live without restraints—and marching toward blood-soaked dominion.