While The Patience of a Saint is similar to Greeley's "Passover Trilogy" in its mix of historical times and personages with elements of both romance and myth, this novel and the others which comprise the books in the series "The Time Between the Stars" is notable for its creation of clans of characters who appear in major and minor roles throughout the series. Coupled with the use Greeley makes of Chicago, and many of the symbolic explorations of specific sites within the city which he employs (Red's conversion experience between the worlds of Upper and Lower Wacker Drive, for example), both the novel and the series of which it is a part are reminiscent of such works as William Faulkner's sagas of Yoknapatawpha County and Garrison Keillor's morality tales of Lake Wobegon.

Greeley's emphasis on Irish Catholic families who inhabit a neighborhood and make it their...