Bye Bye Hapless Habte

The novel opens in 2030 with an ascended saint, St. Illuminata, or "Loomie" assuming a human form as an emergency room clerk. She is visiting 30-year-old Dr. Reina Duarte, one of the emergency room practitioners, and is stating a silent prayer of apology for having messed up Reina's life. The saint vows to make it up to her. 

From there, the story shifts to 2018 along Florida's Treasure Coast, where Reina is in her senior year of high school and she has just met the mysterious young man, Chris Habte, also a senior. nervous bride-to-be Reina Duarte in the year 2025. He is a pitcher on the high school baseball team, and his family had just moved to Florida the year before since his father's amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is rapidly progressing. The trouble starts when he makes a wish out loud to Reina during one of their long walks to school; "I would give anything that my father's ALS is cured and that I could be a professional baseball pitcher in the big leagues." 

St. Illuminata hears Chris' prayer and since she is bored up in Heaven, she assumes the form of a little girl and appears in person to both Chris and Reina to announce to them that both of Chris' wishes will be granted. Unfortunately for Chris and Reina, while Illuminata receives a reprimand from the Archangel Michael, low-level Underworld Chieftain Class 3, Richthius intercepts Chris' wish and grants it as a way to exonerate himself after grounding a warrior angel who had descended to foil a convenience store robbery. Chris and his family end up in the 1950s, where he is a rookie pitcher for the new Kansas City Athletics and his father George is an accountant and money launderer for an organized crime syndicate in Chicago. 

A furious St. Illuminata seeks the help of Faerie queen Narcissa Hygd in somehow helping Reina to free the stranded warrior angel and reunite with Christopher during a heroine's trip back in time to 1956 Kansas City. The story could be considered part Damn Yankees, part The Perils of Pauline, and is even a reverse take on the classic Candide story. The emotional roller coaster does resolve in a happy ending, however.