The Story of B is a 1996 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 written by Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn

Daniel Quinn is an American writer described as an environmentalist. He is best known for his book Ishmael , which won the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award in 1991....

 and published by Bantam

Bantam Books

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...

 Publishing. It chronicles a young priest's movement away from his religion and toward the teachings of a mysterious preacher named B, expanding upon many of the philosophical ideas introduced in Quinn's 1992 novel Ishmael

Ishmael (novel)

Ishmael is a 1992 philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn. It examines mythology, its effect on ethics, and how that relates to sustainability. The novel uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution...

. The Story of B acts as a spiritual successor to both the novels Ishmael and My Ishmael

My Ishmael

My Ishmael is a sidequel to Ishmael and a sequel to The Story of B, both also by Daniel Quinn . Its plot revolves around a gorilla named Ishmael who describes his philosophy regarding tribal society to Julie, a twelve-year-old girl.-Plot summary:...

, also by Daniel Quinn, though in The Story of B the character Ishmael himself is only mentioned in passing as a colleague of B.
The Story of B is presented as a diary

Diary

A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...

 of the American

Americans

The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 first-person narrator

First-person narrative

First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

 and protagonist

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

, Fr. Jared Osborne, a Roman Catholic priest

Priest

A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...

 of the Laurentian order

Religious order

A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice. The order is composed of initiates and, in some...

.