Angels

Jamie Mays, a young mother, boards a Greyhound bus in Oakland, California, with her two daughters, five-year-old Miranda and infant Baby Ellen, fleeing her unfaithful husband. She is headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania, to live with her sister-in-law. Her husband choked her twice and had an affair with her best friend, Sarah Miller.

On the bus, Jamie meets Bill Houston, a tattooed ex-Navy man and ex-convict of about 40. He befriends Miranda, shares drinks with Jamie, and reveals he has been married three times. Jamie agrees to stop in Pittsburgh with Bill. He spends recklessly, burning through over $2,000 on bars. On a city bus, he tries to bribe the driver to take them to Philadelphia; when the driver refuses, Bill sets the money on fire. Jamie saves only $13.

The narrative splits. Jamie, nearly destitute, sells blood plasma for five dollars. Bill drifts to Chicago, where he robs a hardware store clerk at finger-point, using his finger in his coat pocket as a fake gun. Riding Chicago's elevated train afterward, he feels a euphoric conviction that he is "the greatest thief of all time" (39), but wakes later at a cheap hotel recognizing himself as a man without a chance.

Jamie follows Bill to Chicago with her daughters, exhausted and directionless. A man named Ned approaches, claiming to know the neighborhood and Bill. He offers to help Jamie search, takes her to his sister Jean's apartment, and gives her drugs. He then leads her to his own apartment, where he and Jean's husband, Randall, handcuff, drug, and rape her. Jamie endures the assault to protect her children. Afterward, Ned deposits her in a rented room with $20.

Bill spots a newspaper headline about the assault and traces Jamie through police and social services. They reunite. Outside the Biograph Theatre, where gangster John Dillinger was killed, Jamie demands Bill help her kill her rapists. Bill refuses, explaining that men he knew in prison who killed only wanted to kill again. He tells Jamie he loves her. They begin calling the assault "The Rape," a term that represents their bond: coming together while falling apart. Bill suggests they go to Phoenix, where he has family.

In Phoenix, the narrative introduces Bill's elderly mother, Mrs. Houston, who lives alone on Social Security and worries about her three sons: Bill, her oldest, and his half-brothers James and Burris. James works a dangerous vehicle repossession job and struggles with a violent temper. Burris, the youngest, has a heroin addiction and is heartbroken over his ex-wife, who left him for a drug dealer. His girlfriend, Jeanine Phillips, reads to him from the Urantia Book, a religious text blending spirituality and cosmology.

Bill, Jamie, and the children arrive for a family barbecue. After dinner, James introduces a robbery plan: a man named Dwight Snow, an expert armed robber with no criminal record, proposes they rob the Central Avenue First State Bank. Dwight wears a baseball cap lined with tin foil to block what he calls "E-rays," harmful energies he believes target him. Bill dislikes Dwight's controlling manner but agrees, tempted by the promise of "money right or wrong" (97). Meanwhile, Jamie spirals deeper into amphetamine abuse and begins hearing voices.

On the morning of the robbery, the three brothers pick up Dwight. Burris drives the getaway car; Bill hides his sawed-off shotgun inside a bouquet of wildflowers. Inside the bank, James holds his revolver on the security guard. As James moves to disarm him, the guard, a retired officer named Roger Crowell, draws his own weapon and shoots James in the abdomen. From outside, Burris screams for someone to kill the guard. Bill shoots the guard dead, and as he fires, a lifetime of tension dissolves inside him. The men flee; James is wounded but alive.

Burris is later arrested at a factory job. Bill is jailed in solitary at the Maricopa County Jail, where his public defender, Samuel Fredericks, tells him the prosecution wants the death penalty under a new state statute. Bill writes Jamie a letter asking her to tell Burris he is still his brother. Fredericks reveals that Jamie has had a mental health crisis and is hospitalized. Dwight Snow, whose weapon was never fired, obtains separate proceedings with better counsel.

Jamie is committed to the Arizona State Hospital, where she descends into psychosis. Medicated with Thorazine, she undergoes electroshock therapy and cycles through successive wards, each representing deeper deterioration. At her lowest point, she sees an angel whose message has no words, only the beat and direction of time. When orderlies force her to clean her writing off the walls, she asks, "What am I doing wrong?" (160). This is the first sensible thing she has said in a month. Bill, sent to the same hospital for a sanity evaluation, experiences his own revelation, perceiving what he calls the Unmade, his name for a divine presence. He is certified sane.

During his trial, Bill reflects on the moment he killed the guard and recognizes that he saw a clear choice and was completely himself. He is sentenced to death. Jamie's condition improves; she enters an outpatient rehabilitation program and agrees to live in a halfway house. Miranda and Baby Ellen are sent to their father. At the airport, Jeanine lifts Miranda before a mirror. Miranda studies her reflection, says, "That's not me," then places her hand on her chest: "This is me" (169).

Bill is transferred to the Death House at Florence Prison two weeks before his execution. A guard named Brian shows him the gas chamber; over its interior window, Old English lettering reads, "Death Is The Mother Of Beauty" (173). In the adjacent cell, Richard Clay Wilson, convicted of murdering a child, has spent 13 years on Death Row. Every night at three AM, Richard screams a prayer to "Crossvader," his private name for Jesus. The two men form a cautious bond, and Richard reads his poem, "Talking Richard Wilson Blues," aloud to Bill.

Jamie receives a pass from the hospital and visits Burris in jail, delivering Bill's message: "Tell Burris he'll still be my brother" (198). In the Death House, word comes that Richard's sentence will be commuted to life. Bill's appeal has not gone through.

At five AM, Brian wakes Bill. He is stripped to his underpants. Brian breaks protocol: "I don't think you deserve to die. I think you been healed" (204). Bill is strapped into the gas chamber. The door shuts. He hears rattling in the pipes, then boiling liquid beneath him. Vapor curls over his knees. He holds his breath and feels each heartbeat slow and expand, each more beautiful than the last. He rests in the dark between heartbeats, and when the last one comes, he offers a final prayer: "I would like to take this opportunity to pray for another human being" (205).

Outside the prison, Fredericks stands among a crowd gathered in the dark. At a cafe in Florence, he learns from the radio that Bill Houston has been executed. The novel closes with a story the prisoners tell: that each night a light burned in a window in town, visible from one cellblock, and each man imagined it shone for him alone. The narrator calls this "just a story, something that people will tell themselves, something to pass the time it takes for the violence inside a man to wear him away, or to be consumed itself, depending on who is the candle and who is the light" (207).