In Moscow, a man is looking at a map of the Caucasus. He is a Doukhobor, a `spirit-wrestler', member of a group of radical Russian sectarians. `Here,' he says, `I was born here. On the edge of the world.' So begins Marsden's journey into a strange and ambiguous world - a world where nothing is quite as solid as belief, where miracles are a part of everyday life, and where the Russian steppe gives way to the hostile Caucasian scarp...