Patron Saints by Daniel Riddle Rodriguez

Spanning a period from the mid-nineties to the early aughts, the linked stories in Patron Saints feature a cast of recurring characters who are irresistibly, undeniably real. A young girl comes-of-age in a town full of hunters, wolf pits, and traps. An ex-con makes a home between rocks and hard places while trying to please both his boss and his probation officer. A prostitute snaps a heel, and her pimp, a self-described "soul poacher," feels compelled to take action. Patron Saints explores the symbiotic relationship between dominant and submissive personalities: lost children and their surrogates, hustlers and hoes, hunters and their human prey—characters consumed by ambition and wracked with guilt. This is a world of lapsed Catholics and burnouts. Beauty queens and bulimics. Like sheep, they were sent into a world of wolves by God, and they haven't forgiven him since.

About the poet: Daniel Riddle Rodriguez is a full-time student and father from San Lorenzo, California, where he lives with his wife and son. He is the author of Low Village (CutBank 2016) and Low Village: Rules of the Game (Nomadic Press 2016). Previous publications include Fourteen Hills, Eleven Eleven, MonkeyBicycle, Juked, Literary Orphans, Gulf Stream Magazine, Glassworks, Mid-American Review, Word Riot, Prairie Schooner, The Penn Review, and others. Moonlighting as a performance poet, he represented the Oakland Slam Team at National Poetry Slam 2014.