Saint Maybe

Saint Maybe Summary | Plot Summary

Everyone on Waverly Street agrees that the Bedloes are the perfect family, two amiable parents, three attractive children, a cat, a dog and assorted goldfish. Ian Bedloe, the youngest at seventeen, is a medium sort of person, a popular high school baseball pitcher. Ian's athletic older brother, Danny, marries Lucy Dean, the divorced mother of two small children, Agatha and Thomas. Shortly after the birth of baby Daphne, Danny dies in an auto accident. A few months later, the distraught Lucy dies of a sleeping pill overdose. Ian feels responsible for both deaths. Ian's pastor, Reverend Emmett of the Church of Second Chances, convinces him to quit college and care for the three children. Tyler's novel is peopled with quirky characters beloved for their idiosyncrasies. Painstaking detail paints a picture so specific, it is universal. Examining Ian's struggles to accept his role as a reluctant young parent, the novel illustrates the redemptive power of love, and redefines the perfect family.

When Ian Bedloe begins to baby-sit in the afternoons for his sister-in-law, Lucy, shortly after the birth of baby Daphne, he suspects Lucy is having an affair. When Lucy is late returning home one evening, it ruins a very special date for Ian with Cicely, his girlfriend since junior high. Furious, Ian lashes out by telling his brother Danny that Lucy is having an affair, and Daphne is not his. Danny, enraged and slightly intoxicated, speeds away and hits the stone wall at the end of Waverly Street, dying in the crash. Ian is wracked by guilt, which is exacerbated when Lucy dies a few months later, apparently of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. On winter break from college, Ian seeks solace inside a storefront church, the Church of the Second Chance. Ian confesses to Rev. Emmett, expecting absolution. Instead, the minister demands that Ian make reparation by quitting college and raising Agatha, Thomas and Daphne. Initially reluctant, Ian comes to accept that he will find peace only when he shoulders this responsibility.

Over the next 23 years, Ian continues to care for the children to the best of his ability, assisted by his parents Doug and Bee, and by the members of the Church of the Second Chance. The entire family's optimism and good humor suffers under the crushing responsibility of daily care for the children. Their extended family expands to include a rotating group of Middle Eastern students, and their neighbor, Jessie Jordan. The family, united by love and responsibility for each other, endures through Ian's failed romances, Bee's death, and Daphne's turbulent teen years. Eventually, Ian comes to realize that it is these everyday acts of caring, of giving the baby a bottle and changing a diaper even when we don't want to, that make a perfect family.