The Patience of a Saint is part of a series of novels set in a time frame between 1933 and 1992. The series is called "The Time Between the Stars," Greeley explains, because these dates are represented on the flag of the city of Chicago by the fourth (and what should have been the fifth) star. The world of these novels is inhabited by three families — the Ryans, the Collinses, and the Caseys — who represent the social and religious evolution of Chicago Irish Catholics which Greeley has observed during his lifetime. The Ryan family's patriarch, Ned, was a naval hero in World War II. He is characterized as a shrewd, gentle, kindly man who married a mercurial and passionate woman named Kate Collins.

Their children represent the rise of the Irish to the ranks of the well-educated and the politically powerful elite: psychiatrist Mary Kate Ryan...