a psychiatric casualty from the vietnam war, trip tripoletti accepts a teaching position at st. sebastian college run by norbertine monks and discovers not all madness is confined to army psychiatric wards. they're all here—a stigmatic dwarf, a cat-torturing ukrainian, a poisonous dean, an lsd-crazed monk, a necrophilic priest, a suicidal homosexual, a pre-orgasmic dean of women—along with the usual collection of zany faculty all too familiar to those of us who survived catholic higher education. gabriel's characters are alive and crazy, and hysterically funny to boot, that is until trip stumbles upon the terrible secret kept by the monks of st. sebastian, and then events take a deadly turn that threatens trip's sanity and his life. sebastian's cross is black humor at its best!