Tasked with oversight of a commercial enterprise owned by the King of Assyria, Sargon II, Tobit is able to provide a comfortable life for his family.

When the King and his murderous son, Sennacherib, leave the corpses of Jews out in the streets or on refuse tips, Tobit rescues the bodies and facilitates a proper burial.

Where he once saved the bodies of his fellow Jews and gave the poor among them money, now Tobit is reduced to a life of angry passivity, while his exasperated wife is forced to take up sewing for prosperous families of the neighbourhood.

Afraid of arranged marriage and the ‘embrace of a virtual stranger’,[1] the beautiful young Sarah has made a Faust-like pact with a demon named Asmodeus.

[2] For the preservation of the household, Tobit insists that his son must set out on a journey to the home of an old friend, Gabael, in far-off Media, with whom the crafty old merchant has hidden two sacks of silver.

Unbeknown to Tobias, his new companion is the Archangel Raphael, who has taken it upon himself to step down into the material world in order to bring about a reversal in fortune for this beleaguered family.

As the two travellers enter Ecbatana, Azarias informs Tobias of his plan to see the young man married to Sarah, the beautiful daughter of a friend of his named Raguel.

Azarias’s suggestion that the bridegroom burn some of the fish entrails before heading into the bridal chamber results in the final defeat of Asmodeus, who is overpowered by the smoke and sent fleeing from the scene.

The miraculous return of Tobit’s sight is cause for further joy, and the novel closes as Raphael privately reveals his true identity to Tobias, encouraging him as he departs to continue in his father’s charitable ways.

Whereas doubt-filled prior narrators, in describing the lives and actions of their God-struck fellow-travellers, have given expression to the scepticism of the reader, the Archangel who ‘pass[es] in and out of the presence of the Holy One’[5] cannot be a repository for doubt.

Rather than using his narrator as a means of voicing scepticism, Buechner’s archangel comments on, and relays, the doubts of the other characters, offering statements about the nature of God with a gentle, authoritative confidence.

With this new narrative voice the author is able to present a perspective on theological questions concerning suffering, and God’s goodness and sovereignty that is unique to his previous novels.

Concerning the inspiration for the novel, in an interview given to the San Diego Weekly Reader the author said: I had my seventieth birthday two summers ago, and I began thinking about things people write when they get to be old codgers.