Bye Bye Hapless Habte

The novel opens with nervous bride-to-be Reina Duarte in the year 2025. She has just finished medical school and will be marrying Bryce, a junior executive for a pharmaceutical firm. When a mysterious little girl delivers her a cryptic message just before the rehearsal dinner, it sends her tumbling back to the past to her relationship with the mysterious and ethereal Christopher Habte, her first love, in high school. He is a pitcher on the high school baseball team, and his family had just moved to Florida the year before since his father's amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is rapidly progressing. The trouble starts when he makes a wish out loud to Reina during one of their long walks to school; "I would give anything that my father's ALS is cured and that I could be a professional baseball pitcher in the big leagues." An obscure ascended saint, Illuminata, descends to earth in the middle of one of Chris' games to announce to him that his wishes will be granted. Unfortunately for Chris and Reina, while Illuminata receives a reprimand from the Archangel Michael, low-level Underworld Chieftain Class 3, Richthius intercepts Chris' wish and grants it as a way to exonerate himself after grounding a warrior angel who had descended to foil a convenience store robbery. Chris and his family end up in the 1950s, where he is a rookie pitcher for the new Kansas City Athletics and his father George is an accountant and money launderer for an organized crime syndicate in Chicago. A furious St. Illuminata seeks the help of Faerie queen Narcissa Hygd in somehow helping Reina to free the stranded warrior angel and reunite with Christopher in a trip back in time to 1956 Kansas City. The story could be considered part Damn Yankees, part The Perils of Pauline, and is even a reverse take on the classic Candide story. The emotional roller coaster does resolve in a happy ending, however.