Author(s): Maggie Stiefvater

Senior Fiction

Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle. Here is a thing everyone fears: What it takes to get one. Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affections, one or two orphans, and a sky full of watchful desert stars. At the heart of this place you will find the Soria family, who all have the ability to perform unusual miracles. And at the heart of this family are three cousins longing to change its future: Beatriz, the girl without feelings, who wants only to be free to examine her thoughts; Daniel, the Saint of Bicho Raro, who performs miracles for everyone but himself; and Joaquin, who spends his nights running a renegade radio station under the name Diablo Diablo. They are all looking for a miracle. But the miracles of Bicho Raro are never quite what you expect. Maggie Stiefvater has been called "a master storyteller" by USA Today and "wildly imaginative" by Entertainment Weekly. Now, with All the Crooked Saints, she gives us the extraordinary story of an extraordinary family, a masterful tale of love, fear, darkness, and redemption.

The Sorias of Bicho Raro are miracle workers. Each generation chooses from among them a Saint to meet the Pilgrims hoping for a miracle in their owl-haunted desert home. Known only to the Soria clan, and no-one else, is that the miracles are twofold. First, the darkness in each Pilgrim must be summoned and given form, be it a giant snake that binds a pair of twins together or a physical transformation like the man stretched twenty feet high. Only then can the Pilgrim learn the meaning of their suffering and defeat their demons, but the Sorias cannot help them in any way, lest they awaken their own darkness, as the darkness of a Soria is certain doom to everyone around them.
Into the midst of this comes Pete, a young man beloved by the desert and with a hole in his heart wanting to earn enough to buy the Soria's truck - currently owned by the headstrong and practical Beatriz Soria, would-be Saint if not for her cousin, Daniel. But Daniel is in great danger as his love for a Pilgrim threatens to curse all of Bicho Raro.
Recommended for 13+
- Sasha