Victorian Vicar Meets Baby Boomer's Gen Y Offspring

Kyle Welland becomes the focal point between the staunch Victorian outlook of his Great-grandfather Christopher Dryden and the moral relativism of his Gen Y son Andrew. Caught in this no-man's-land, he struggles with his own vacillating sense of purpose and identity, coming to see himself as a point on the graph of Western Civilization's decline.

His son is addicted to pot and video games. He's flunking high school, unemployed, and seemingly prepared to live at home indefinitely. Surly, slovenly, undisciplined, he seems determined to do everything he can not to live up to any of Kyle and Doreen Wellands' expectations.

The Wellands' relationship, which was strained to begin with, is pushed to the breaking point by their different approaches to their disastrous, wayward son. She wants Kyle to take a 'tough love' approach; he wants her to stop her 'incessant nagging', which he feels is damaging their relationship with Andrew. They fight constantly with each other and with their son.

Life is hell.

Given the task of revising his Great-grandfather's memoir, which must be completed before his aging mother passes away or loses her mental faculties, Kyle decides - somewhat resentfully - to take a holiday trip to Barkerville to do some research and experience the setting where Reverend Dryden proved his missionary metal and met his future bride.

At Doreen's very strong behest - she insists she's going to suffer a breakdown unless she gets some time to herself - he forces Andrew to join him on this genealogical quest, which Doreen characterizes as a 'father son thing' while Kyle feels it is certain to be an ordeal.

Throughout the novel Kyle will be trying to trace the lines of social history from Christopher Dryden to Andrew Welland - unconsciously at first, but more and more pointedly. As he begins to flesh out Christopher's religious idealism, his romanticism, his courage, and almost irrational optimism, Kyle finds himself regretting some of the values he and his son never had; even as he sees quite clearly that Christopher's Victorian mode would be utterly unfeasible in the 21st Century.

Kyle discovers that the real quest is for him to love his son, and see the spirit of Christopher Dryden living on four generations removed.