DrJoshua Christian’s work as a clinical psychologist daily presents him with bitter tableaux of a people spiritually impoverished by too much change: political, climatic, ideological. Joshua’s deep compassion and extraordinary personal magnetism have created a devout following among his patients, but living and working in the relative backwater of a small Connecticut city, he yearns to reach out and help on a much larger scale.
Enter Dr Judith Carriol, a brilliant senior official from the powerful new Department of the Environment. Ambitious, totally career oriented, as elegant as she is Machiavellian, Judith recognises in Joshua the personification of her desire to influence the history of her country. Joshua presents an irresistible prospect to one of her makeup, obsessed with power but preferring to wield it anonymously.
Together Judith and Joshua embark upon a crusade designed to regenerate the nation’s morale by radically changing the outlook of its people. But always it is Judith who engineers, Joshua who must execute. It is Judith who dreams up Joshua’s tour across a country devastated by winter, Judith who uncannily provides the mystified Joshua with every resource to make his incredible journey a reality. But it is Joshua alone who transforms the tour into an epic pilgrimage that touches and renews millions, and as he reaches out to the cold hands and despairing hearts of the American people, his grateful followers come to see him as more than a man.