Saint Maybe

Saint Maybe (1991) by American novelist Anne Tyler is a family saga about an upper-middle class family in Baltimore, Maryland, and their reaction to a sudden death in the family. It is the 12th novel by Ms. Tyler. The novel was praised for its characterization of normal American life and questioning the nature of the family unit. Saint Maybe was adapted, in 1998, into a popular Hallmark movie. While the novel did not receive a Pulitzer Prize nomination as her other works have, it was a New York Times Notable Book for 1991.

Its themes include guilt, the nature of family, and the possibility of leading a new life. The novel is told in third-person from alternating points of views. Over two decades, all of the family member’s perspectives are heard.

The narrative begins with 17-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest member of the Bedloe family. He’s affable and well-liked, though fairly ordinary compared to his brother who is a decade older than him, and who is a football star and all-around “golden child,” or his sister, who greatly succeeds in academics.



The narrator says that Ian is emblematic of the rest of the family. He is handsome, doesn’t worry about many things, and is generally secure about his American life. In fact, his mother and father, Bee and Doug, are one of the few happily married couples on Waverly Street.

One day, two years later when Ian is 19, he tells his brother that he believes Lucy, Danny’s wife, was pregnant before they started their courtship. Part of this suspicion lies in the fact that Lucy already had two children from a previous marriage.

Shortly after, Danny drives home late at night in a fury. Distracted, he’s involved in a fatal car crush. The family can never be sure whether he intended to crash into the wall and kill himself.



Lucy is paralyzed with grief. Despite the attempts of the family to comfort her, she can’t go on. Just when things couldn’t get worse, Lucy in turn completes suicide by swallowing a horde of sleeping pills.

The three children—Agatha, Thomas, and Daphne—then become the responsibility of their grandparents, Bee and Doug. Initially, Bee and Doug are unsure whether they want to take on the care of Agatha and Thomas, as they aren’t even Danny’s children, but come around soon enough.

Ian realizes that all of his suspicions were incorrect: Danny was really the father of the youngest child, Daphne. He’s plunged into guilt. His siblings and parents insist that he had no role in the deaths of Danny and Lucy, but Ian continues to feel that he did in fact play a role.



A Protestant Reverend Emmett helps Ian deal with his vast guilt.  The church is on the fringe of Protestantism. Unlike most sects that focus on communion and baptism, this sect is all about talking through one’s sins. Ian tells Emmett what he feels that he does. Emmett advises him to drop out of college and care for the now orphaned children, who are only six, three, and months old.

To atone for his acts, Ian stops going to college after one semester to help raise Danny and Lucy’s children. He supports himself by practicing carpentry. As the years pass, he becomes an expert at making cabinets.

As his parents age and become sick, he also becomes the primary caretaker for them. Because of his atonement, Ian is the “saint maybe” of the novel, a title given to him in jest by his niece, Daphne.



Three years later, the children are increasingly independent, and both Bee and Doug die.

Ian is proud of himself for fulfilling a moral responsibility, yet he’s haunted by the feeling that he hasn’t been able to lead a normal, fulfilling life because he had to take care of all the kids at a young age. At one point, he hires a private detective, Eli Everjohn, to hunt down the father of two of the children. The investigation doesn’t find the man. Eventually, Ian realizes that carrying for the three children was hardly a punishment; it was an absolute joy.

Ian becomes more involved with the church led by Reverend Emmett, who increasingly becomes a father figure after Ian’s own father passes. The church, appropriately named “Church of the Second Chance,” enables Ian to build the foundations for a second life.



One day, Ian meets a secretary named Rita. She is an enterprising “clutter counselor.” The two fall into a romance. But Ian, keeping up with the theme of atonement, avoids her. He stopped having sex with anyone shortly after joining the Church of the Second Chance.

But Rita and Ian understand each others’ needs on a fundamental level. If there’s a sign that Ian can stop atoning for his rash action as a young man, it is that Rita came into his life. Rita and Ian have a child and name him Joshua. Saint Maybe ends with the two of them happily together and introducing the new baby to the rest of their family.