All Saints — Kathleen Daisy Miller

Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor Award

In a linked collection that presents the secreted small tragedies of an Anglican congregation struggling to survive, All Saints delves into the life of Simon, the Reverend, and the lives of his parishioners: Miss Alice Vipond, a refined and elderly schoolteacher, incarcerated for a horrendous crime; a woman driven to extreme anxiety by borderline-abusive sex; Owen, “The Shitblood Man,” who, lost in the woods, loses himself in a fit of rage; a receptionist and her act of improbable generosity; a writer making peace with her divorce. Effortlessly written and candidly observed, All Saints is a moving collection of tremendous skill, whose intersecting stories illuminate the tenacity and vulnerability of modern-day believers.

Praise for All Saints

"Fictional places have been mostly secular of late: the home, the bar, the workplace. Standing at the centre of K.D. Miller's touching and intimate collection of linked stories is, unfashionably, a church. All Saints is not just the setting for the habits and rituals of this motley group -- parishioners, priest, passersby -- but the central image that gives these stories their poignancy. As obsolescence threatens the church, it also puts in peril the connections each character has to others at the very time the world so badly needs human connections. All Saints is a moving and soulful book." -- Caroline Adderson