THE TRANSMIGRATIONS OF TIMOTHY ARCHER
Back covers
From the back cover of the 1983 Timescape edition
THE BISHOP OF CALIFORNIA HAS ENTEREO THE DEAD SEA IN A DATSUN. . . From the stultifying San Francisco street scene through the corridors of human thought, Bishop Timothy Archer, alcoholic lawyer turned powerful religious head, leads his son Jeffrey, his daughter-in law Angel, his pill-popping mistress and a cast of pained and passed-by 60s' survivors on a madcap search for the ultimate Truth. In Philip K. Dick's most ambitious novel,Bishop Archer theorizes, mesmerizes, fornicates, fantasizes and persists his way into a mystical abyss where only the doomed can dwell. .From the back cover of the 1991 Vintage edition
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the final novel in the trilogy that also includes VALIS and The Divine Invasion, is an anguished, learned, and very moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief. It is the story of Timothy Archer, an urbane Episcopal bishop haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress-and driven by them into a bizarre quest for the identity of Christ.
From the back cover of the 1987 Grafton edition
Bishop Timothy Archer is California's most charismatic church leader. a single-minded seeker after the truth prepared to change or even abandon the most sacred tenets of the Christian faith, , , prepared to accept that Christ's most famous sayings were recorded two centuries before He lived, prepared to see Christianity as a Middle Eastern mushroom cult. and prepared to be put on trial as a heretic, In his majestic wake bob the flotsam and jetsam of utterly wrecked lives, Death stalks his closest relatives-his son Jeff. his mistress Kirsten - but Timothy Archer will let nothing stand in the way of his quest.