Since I didn't read the blurb about this one and just judged it by its cover, I had no idea it was Christian literature. This became very obvious in Brady's later years. I am not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, so there many places when scripture was quoted that turned me off a bit, however, I understand how they were essential to the story.

The story begins with two very different lives moving along two very different paths in life. Brady is a young teenage boy who lives with his alcoholic abusive mother and his younger brother Petey. He hates school but comes to find that drama is the place in life he lives for. He has a part time job or two, gets mixed up in some criminal behavior, drops out of school and finds himself in out of juvenile hall and then prison. In Part Two, we find he is sent back to prison where all he wants to do us die. Until a preacher gives him some insight as to how he can live with himself and his deeds.

That preacher ends up being the second life we follow. Thomas has moved from parish to parish with his wife, who seems to be ailing from a sickness she doesn't want diagnosed. No matter how hard Thomas tries, he can't seem to please any of the parishioners for an extended period of time. Until he finds as a last resort that a prison is in need of a new chaplain. This prison is where Brady Darby ends up.

There are many secondary characters that are integral to the story: Brady's brother Petey, his mother Erline, his first true live after his teens Katey, Thomas's daughter and son-in-law Revinia and Dirk, and his ailing wife. And who can forget the big man of the jailhouse: Yanno. I admit, I cried at the end. Not sure if it was because I was sad or if I found the miracles that occurred astounding. For a book on religion, it sure was a good one.