Erc's decision to set aside the life of the new-born child in service of the “new faith” sees Brendan separated from his parents, Finnloag and Cara, and raised ‘to the glory of the new and true grand God’,[2] at the school of Abbot Jarlath.

Brendan expects to bring the simple blessing of Bishop Erc to a new monarch at Cashel, but, upon their arrival at the castle, the travellers are confronted by a clown named Crosan, who informs them of a succession crisis.

Into this cloud of confusion and tension steps an old friend, Maeve, who, following her childhood sojourn at Jarlath's school alongside Brendan, had been stationed at a nunnery, before escaping to become a roving warrior.

Bishop Erc's tales from the time of Saint Patrick, especially those concerning the martyrs who journeyed across the sea in search of the “land of the blessed”, stir in Brendan memories of his own childhood vision, in which, from a vantage point on cliffs overlooking the stormy waves, he himself had seen the same mysterious paradise: “Tir-na-n-Og”.

Within the turmoil of this crisis, the adventurers encounter a giant whale, a hellish volcanic eruption, unhinged monks who inhabit desolate islands, and an uncouth stranger full of tales, sat astride a rock in the middle of the sea.

His quest ends in despair, and, following a misadventure on an island once inhabited by monks, the pilgrim returns home again, weary, dispirited, and convinced that his life has been a failure.

The old saint is bent on using his twilight years in the service of the poor, the care of the destitute and elderly, and in offering spiritual council to all who will listen, before taking his last voyage back to Ireland, and finally, having produced several miracles, bringing peace to Cashel.

In his autobiographical work, Telling Secrets, Buechner describes attending St Barnabas Church in Glen Ellyn IL, while guest lecturing at Wheaton in the Fall term of 1985.

[10] Searching for a similar experience upon his return to Vermont, Buechner recalls his visit to a Greek Orthodox Monastery, and a sermon delivered by a 'huge monk in cloth of gold'.

Concerning the development of this particular voice, Buechner commented in an interview with Harold Fickett that: One of the great devices in Irish writing is the simple business of reversing the usual position of adjectives.

The reviewer for The Atlantic identified it as a ‘a grand, gaudy tale’,[20] while The Washington Post World review labelled Brendan an ‘exuberant’ novel, which ‘proves the power of faith to lift us up, to hold us straight, to send us on again.’[21] In her work, Frederick Buechner: novelist/theologian of the lost and found, literary critic Marjorie Casebier McCoy suggests that the novel ‘wells up from Buechner’s questing faith’, concluding that here the author ‘has discovered a way that makes it possible for him to carry out his vocation as novelist/theologian’.