Julian Tremane is a missionary priest in a remote Philippine village during the Marcos dictatorship. After championing the Communist rebels, he finds himself imprisoned for the murder of a local military commander. Three decades later, following his own mysterious death, a cult developes around Julian, whose intercession is credited with miraculous healing, and there are calls for him to be made a saint. When Philip Seward is sent out from England to investigate on behalf of Julian's family, he is drawn into a labyrinth of vice, violence and corruption where nothing and nobody are what they seem.