Rag and Bone Author:Peter Manseau By examining relics -- the bits and pieces of long dead saints and holy men and women at the heart of nearly all religious traditions -- Peter Manseau delivers a remarkable book about life and about faith and how it is sustained. The result of wide travel and the author's own deep curiosity, filled with true tales of the living and dub... more »ious legends of the dead, Rag and Bone tells of: a California seeker who ended up in a Jerusalem convent because of a nun's disembodied hand; a French forensics expert who travels on the metro with a rib of a saint; two young brothers who collect tickets at a Syrian mosque, and many other stories, myths, and peculiar histories.
With these, and an array of other digits, limbs, and bones, Manseau provides a respectful, witty, inquisitive, and thoughtful investigation into the place where the abstractions of faith meet the realities of physical objects, of rags and bones.« less