Souls of Angels: A Novel

Set amid the haciendas and fragrant orange groves of Los Angeles in the 1880s, Souls of Angels is an enthralling story of family and faith, loyalty and betrayal.

When Isadora Lugo learns her that father has been convicted of murder, she reluctantly travels home for the first time in ten years. At age seventeen she’d fled her troubled home life in Los Angeles to serve Christ in India as Sister Ria, never planning to return. Yet as a child, Isadora had promised her dying mother that in times of trouble she would care for her father, the eccentric Don Maximiato Lugo. And trouble had indeed come. Following a haphazard investigation and speedy trial for the brutal killing of a local prostitute, Don awaits his fate in the family hacienda, sketching and painting and sinking into madness.

Believing it is too late to save her father’s life, Sister Ria urges him to confess his sins and save his soul. But he only mocks her efforts. Those around Don Lugo–the loyal Mexicans who consider him a saint; his eldest daughter, Milagros; and the family’s longtime housekeeper, Aba–are adamant about the patrón’s innocence.

For her own peace of mind, Sister Ria seeks evidence of her father’s innocence or guilt in the side streets and back alleys of Mexican Los Angeles. But every clue she finds hints at something darker and more sinister and weakens her faith, as her very life is threatened by an ominous unseen figure that shadows her every move.

Souls of Angels captures the vibrant and conflicting cultures of Anglo and Hispanic Los Angeles at the end of the nineteenth century. Brilliantly balancing emotion and suspense, Thomas Eidson takes us deep into the heart of an extraordinary woman as she faces the ultimate test of family loyalty and risks her soul to uncover the truth.

Thomas Eidson is the acclaimed author of The Missing, which was made into a major motion picture directed by Ron Howard, St. Agnes’ Stand, All God’s Children, and Hannah’s Gift. He lives in Boston.