Born in 1900 and telling her story in the present, Roxanna Slade is a woman whom her friends and family have thought of as a "saint." Toward the end of her long life, however, she's at pains to tell why she's been both less and more than a saint - a woman of intensely clear vision, forthright hungers and (despite strong headwinds) immense vitality. Fiercely loyal to all she loves yet prone to the chill of melancholy (one such long depression leads her to the edge of violence), Roxanna is as sweet-and-keen tongued as the great tale tellers, which she finally proves to be.
Rarely leaving a small-town world and educated chiefly by television, her level voice works through ninety years and the high tides of loss to cut a clear record of what she's seen, done and learned. No saint then but no great sinner, Roxanna fearlessly reveals herself at the end of her century as the transparent crossroads of a life's tall griefs and quick elations - the relic also of two World Wars, our racial torments and our ongoing rush toward confusion - lit by the smiling triumph of endurance, a complicated but decent shine.
