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Overview
New Orleans in the 1950s shelters a number of strangers who will meet in Karen Palmer's novel of redemptive love. A Cajun named Harlan Dessonier is languishing in the Quarter, longing for home but reluctant to go, because it means having to face the pain of his wife's infidelity. Another is Glory Wiltz, a white nurse with a young biracial child who will soon be old enough to experience segregation. All Saints is about the spiritual centers of people and the critical epiphanies that determine destiny.Editorials
Entertainment Weekly
Taut, vivid...short-fuse sex and violence...Publishers Weekly -
The lives of a Cajun ex-convict, a faithless Catholic priest and a white nurse married to a black musician converge in a compelling study of smothered fury and thwarted love in Palmer's strong debut, set in a sometimes overdrawn 1954 Louisiana. Bayou native Harlan Desonnier has just finished an eight-year stretch at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola: his crime, the murder of his wife because he suspected that their child was fathered by his best friend, Louis Chopin. Rather than face Louis back home, he goes to New Orleans. After a fistfight with his brother, Harlan gets stitched up by nurse Glory Wiltz. Lonely and at loose ends, Harlan seeks out Glory and Father Frank Doyle, who visited him in prison. Meanwhile these two reluctant saviors have their own troubles, as Glory struggles to get custody of her mixed-race baby and Father Frank wrestles with religious doubt. The three cover the southern Louisiana landscape together and separately: Harlan to face his young daughter; Glory to confront her lost husband; Father Frank to rediscover his calling. Despite meticulous research, Palmer's picture of the regionCajun dialect, voodoo practices, Bible-thumping Baptist preachersis not quite on the mark. Beneath the chers and the apothecary jars of one-eyed toads, however, lies a sensual, emotionally resonant story.David Galef
Karen Palmer's powerful first novel, "All Saints" [is] a gumbo of sex and blues, religion and death, racism and revenge. Palmer has a deft touch...-- The New York Times Book Review
Entertainment Weekly
Taut, vivid...short-fuse sex and violence...Washington Post Book World
This stunning debut novel weaves the stories of three lonely people into a lyrical tale of hope and spiritual redemption.Book Details
Published
February 28, 1999
Publisher
Soho Press, Incorporated
Pages
288
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9781569471388