No matter how they tell it, wax and plaster saints have nothing on flesh and blood.Just ask Sao Esperitu, a young woman with the clean eyes and the healing power. Sometimes a miracle looks like a bloody dog in the driveway, needing to be healed. Other times it's a Native American ex-con on a Harley, needing to be saved. Bo Notices has spent his life running from responsibility until he gets religion and a saint for a wife. But Sao and Bo's new stake in happiness doesn't come unchallenged.

Or ask any of the StandsStraight women, the daughters of Jack and Oklahoma: Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Tennessee Jane. Sainthood may be a matter of leading a traveling evangelical church. Or it may just be a matter of living through the sufferings of motherhood and sisterhood. Of lost children recovered, of others forever lost.

Victims and healers, saints and sinners. They all come together in these pages through interlinked tales of intertwined lives, voices interwoven in time and space.