He works, at the beginning of the novel, at a Chicago bookstore, but he can't shake his calling; strangers will unload their anxieties on them, struck by a supernatural confessional urge. (firstthings.com)
'» The historical Ferreira, upon whom Endō's Ferreira is based, wrote similar accounts of the Japanese martyrs, one of which is quoted at the beginning of the novel. (firstthings.com)
As Simon Harcourt, Cornish's would - be biographer, says at the beginning of the novel, in words that seem very much Davies's own despite their placement in the mouth of an Anglican theologian: (religion-online.org)