I came into All the Crooked Saints completely ignorant. I had never heard of the book, or of the author, Maggie Stiefvater. It was a complete blind date. As far as blind dates go, All the Crooked Saints was beautiful, charming, sincere, a bit mysterious, and gave me a satisfactory kiss at the end.
What luck that a recommended book fit what my soul was hungering for so perfectly. What does my soul hunger for? Friends. While all books offer characters who are potential friends, every reader has a particular combination of qualities they are looking for in characters they can call friends. All the Crooked Saints had my number.
I was taken in at the opening scene when I met sixteen year old Diablo Diablo acting as DJ of a pirate radio station transmitting from the back of a truck in a high, isolated desert in Colorado. Joaquin, Diablo’s real name, wears Hawaiian print shirts and an Elvis hair style. I was taken in by his cousin, Beatriz, the girl “without feelings,” who put the transmitting equipment in the pirate radio station together. I was taken in by Daniel, another cousin with long hair and spider eyes tattooed on his knuckles. He sees the car lights heading to Bicho Raro and knows they aren’t the FCC hunting for the tiny renegade radio station, but somebody hunting for a miracle.
The list of characters—moms, dads, uncles, aunts, pilgrims, a guy who is there about a truck—goes on and on. Each one gets time, and the time is not wasted. While each character is not equal in the story, each is a different flavor of ice cream that delights your tongue and adds to the overall experience.
Stiefvater is skilled at using few words to call a character to life. It’s little things that lead to bigger things like Beatriz spotting the young man who arrives to inquire about a truck and discovering she wants to press her thumbs into the soft skin on the inside of his elbows. It’s Pete Wyatt—the young man inquiring about the truck—hiding inside the car from the pack of vicious dogs, who looks over to a doorway to see a young woman in a wedding dress covered in live butterflies standing in rain that is only falling on her. It is Beatriz’s sister, Judith, who is so beautiful people stop her on the streets to thank her. It is Judith’s husband, who puts out his cigarette, kisses her manfully, then calmly gets out of their car to sprint for his life. He is leading the pack of dogs away from the famous easily listening DJ, Tony Derisio, trapped on the roof of his egg yolk yellow Mercury Station Wagon. Do you see what I mean? And it all makes sense.
Not knowing anything about the book or Stiefvater when I began I was momentarily confused when the story moved out of the everyday reality of the world I know into a slightly more delightful reality that I wish I knew. Then it moved back again. Stiefvater did this gently, and without explanations. Worried at first that I wouldn’t understand, soon I was delighted by the possibilities and the beautiful picture it created. It turns out the world of Bicho Raro is this world for those who believe.
The lives of the characters—the Soria family who is the giver of miracles; and the pilgrims, who are the sometimes unfortunate seeker of miracles—intertwine simply, but beautifully, like the stark elements in the high Colorado desert. Their flavors mix and mingle creating new flavors as personal discoveries are made and fears confronted.
The characters of All the Crooked Saints, the residents of Bicho Raro, are a celebration and affirmation of the simple things that make us human and that makes humans happy. Stiefvater’s skills at creating refreshing, believable characters and gently weaving different colored realities together has lifted my soul and made my world more beautiful.
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These books by Tory Anderson are now available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback format:
