Families, like cities, go through periods of birth, decay, and renewal.Things can get complicated when it all happens at once. When Margot Desouche, the powerful matriarch of one of Saint Louiss founding families, is diagnosed with cancer, she takes a keen interest in her hospice nurse, Lee Bridger. Lee is drawn to Margot, too, but between her boyfriend who keeps trying to save the architectural treasures of old Saint Louis and her daughter, a some-time actress and full-time con artist, Lee has troubles of her own. When Margots children ally with a volatile community activist and pledge to tear down Margos beloved historic mansion to make way for affordable housing, Margot cuts them out of her will and the battle lines are drawn. With the spectre of the vaunted Veiled Prophet Ball gone wrong and a mysterious Cahokian goddess looming over everything, the heirs apparentand not so apparentmust make peace before Margot draws her last breath. Author Steven Clark paints a poignant portrait of the often crazy, always complicated lives of families large and small, rich and poor. The Saint Louisans is at once a sad and funny study of human and urban death and renewal that evokes the work of Tennessee Williams and Sara Teasdale, two Saint Louisans who wanted to be buried at sea, but instead ended up interred in Saint Louis cemeteries.