This novel is presented as the journal of the master builder who, in the twelfth century, erected the Thoronet Abbey in Provence, a prime example of Cistercian architecture. Day after day, we see this monk-builder grappling with human frailties and the inertia of things, beset by adverse elements and, even more so, by his own inner contradictions. The life of a medieval building site, the technical, financial, and doctrinal problems that hindered its smooth progress, and the surprisingly modern solutions devised to address them appear here quite at odds with the conventional Middle Ages whose image often clutters our collective memory.

However, this vivid chronicle of the birth of a masterpiece, grounded in both original historical research and a long experience of the builder's craft, is also a passionate reflection on the relationship between beauty and necessity, between human order and natural order. And it is also a lyrical meditation on the Order in which all orders have their place, and on that art which unites all the others: architecture.

But it is, first and foremost, an act of faith.