"In The Struggle with the Angel, Kauffmann discusses much more than just a painting: he touches on architecture and art history, the lives of Delacroix and Baudelaire, philosophy and religion - and when he contemplates God, it's not a theoretical God but the Old Testament God who reveals himself in the flesh, like the angel in Genesis who wrestles with Jacob.

Kauffmann says, "Everyone inevitably has to wrestle with the angel; everyone has his or her own moment of truth!" But how does one recognize or comprehend it? Did Delacroix - who toiled so long on his painting?".

"Like Detective Maigret, whom the author greatly admires, Kauffmann investigates the painting and the church that houses it. He is a man obsessed, looking for lingering physical signs in the places Delacroix frequented and the objects he touched some 150 years ago. Led by "the keeper of the keys," who knows Saint-Sulpice inside and out, he searches for evidence in the church's soaring towers and its subterranean crypts.

A patient hunter of clues, Kauffmann visits a rural village in the Argonne and the Senart woods where Delacroix sketched two oak trees. He reads and rereads the passages from Genesis as well as Delacroix's diaries, looking for the truth behind what appears to be true and for the painting's deeper meaning - for both the artist and himself."--BOOK JACKET.