A Jesuit priest and his aid are guided through the wilds of New France by Algonkian Indians. Father Laforgue embarks on a desperate mission to relieve an isolated priest in the wilds of seventeenth-century New France. To Laforgue, his Algonkian Indian guides are savage pagans in dire need of salvation. To the Algonkian Indians, Catholic priests are greedy, selfish, Norman sorcerers. In weaving a tautly suspenseful tale of physical and spiritual adventure, Brian Moore's Black Robe rivals Conrad's Heart of Darkness in its meditation on good and evil in the human heart.