All Saints Day: A New Orleans Football Mystery

Football season in New Orleans has been a study in frustration since the Saints arrived in 1967, but this year could be the worst.

Not only is the team 0-and-8 and headed for yet another dismal campaign, but owner Ron Beauchamp is threatening to move if he doesn’t get a new stadium deal.

Things look bleaker still for the team’s struggling, Polish-born kicker, Oleg Adamowicz, who nearly dies on the Superdome turf after taking a vicious hit while trying (and failing) to make a game-saving tackle.

But a surprise visit from the Pope begins a mysterious turn of events, highlighted by Oleg’s superhuman kicking. He rewrites the record books and leads the team on a winning streak. However, even that might not be enough to keep Beauchamp from putting the team on the selling block.

As the wins mount and Oleg performs a series of “miracles,” fans and teammates alike look to him as the messiah, forcing Oleg to confront his own feelings about religion, which has created a rift with his father back in Warsaw. Aided by Saints cheerleader Charmaine Fontana, Oleg searches for answers, knowing he must save himself before he can rescue the Saints.

Inspired by true events, All Saints Day is a magical story about winning, losing, and the meaning of faith that will make you laugh, make you question your own beliefs, and make you take note of the tiny miracles surrounding us every day.

Originally written in early 2005 and published the week Hurricane Katrina hit, All Saints Day: A New Orleans Football Mystery seems eerily prophetic half a decade (and one Super Bowl title) later.