Deficient Saints: A Tale of Maine

In the quiet town of Rossignol, Maine, the matriarch of the Mercer household spends her evenings immersed in a somber scrapbook she calls her “death‑book.” Filled with photographs, newspaper clippings and tiny silver plates bearing the names and ages of her two late husbands, the volume is both a memorial and a strange comfort for Mrs. Hippolyta Prymmer, a respected leader of the United Brethren church whose sharp mind still flutters through memories of love and loss.

Now, with the prospect of a third marriage looming, she turns her thoughts to her only surviving child, a calculating and stoic son named Justin. As she weighs the reactions he might have to another union, the story unfolds with gentle humor, domestic detail, and the subtle tensions of a family navigating grief, expectation, and the ever‑present hope of new beginnings.