City of God

E. L. Doctorow’s 2000 novel City of God is a postmodern, metafictional novel of religious questioning that attempts to reconcile the history of the 20th century, particularly the Holocaust, with modern conceptions of morality and God. The novel is structured as a fragmented writer’s notebook written by a character loosely based on Doctorow himself. The plot, which concerns a stolen cross and an Episcopalian priest’s doubts about his faith, is rendered through the mediated lens of an author struggling to arrive at the subject matter of his next book.

Plot Summary

City of God’s fragmented sections come from the writer’s notebook of Everett, one of the main characters of the book and a loose representation of E. L. Doctorow. The book alternates between Everett’s fictional recreations of the events of the plot alongside conversations he has with two additional main characters, Thomas Pemberton and Sarah Blumenthal, and a few others figures.

The book begins with Everett writing about his friend Thomas Pemberton as though he is a spiritual detective. Pem is an Episcopal priest whose congregation is flagging and who is in trouble with church leadership over a crisis of faith. When the cross at his church is stolen, he takes it upon himself to find out what happened to it.