The Insomniac Library is proud to reissue Gwendolyn MacEwen's first novel, more than forty years after its original appearance in 1963. MacEwen described what she set out to achieve as a ''sort of powerful poetic mad half-abandoned prose somewhere between [Kenneth] Patchen and Virginia Woolf.'' Set in a medieval past that has distinctly modern overtones, the novel is about Julian, a young man who believes he is Christ. Wandering the countryside in a horse-drawn wagon, Julian learns ''to suspend logic like a whale on a thread.'' He becomes a master of alchemy, performing ''miracles'' like curing the mad and changing water into wine. When his rapt audiences begins to lose faith, Julian must pay with his life.