A religious scholar's take on the place of myths in our lives, which in her view are more important then ever. Her wide-ranging study of mythology, which draws on the works of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, reveals that in every age we have turned to myths to explain the inexplicable: where we come from and where we are going. “We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe,” she writes. And if theologians can no longer provide myths to live by she discovers in novels like Joyce's Ulysses, Mann's The Magic Mountain, and Lowry's Under the Volcano proof that mythmakers still live among us.