A prior, a master builder, and their community try to build a cathedral to protect themselves while Stephen and the Empress Maud fight for the crown of England. Set in twelfth-century England, this epic of kings and peasants juxtaposes the building of a magnificent cathedral with the violence and treachery that often characterized the Middle Ages.

While Jake, Father Callahan, and Oy struggle to free Susannah Dean, whose body is possessed by a demon-mother named Mia, Roland and Eddie find themselves swept by magic to East Stoneham, Maine, in the summer of 1977.