The Loss of the Miraculous is the story of three men and a young woman in an American town by the River Dunbar. It is also the story of a wild and brilliant painter in an ancient Sicilian hill town. All four are looking for the miraculous. The miraculous for the three men is love in all its aspects; for the young woman it is the search of love in the time of the dirty war. The painter in Sicily hovers over them all and retells the story of how he saved the young woman Jeanne from the mysterious killer who kills whenever a comet appears in the sky once every ten years.