West Virginia

Great Reads from Great Places

"The Patron Saint of Ugly" by Marie Manilla

Age: Adult

Born in Sweetwater, West Virginia, with a mop of flaming red hair and a map of the world rendered in port-wine stains on every surface of her body, Garnet Ferrari is used to being an outcast. She has always known how to defend herself against bullies, but she finds she is less adept at fending off the pilgrims who have set up camp outside her hilltop home, convinced that she is Saint Garnet, healer of skin ailments and maker of miracles. Saint or not, Garnet learns in “The Patron Saint of Ugly” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) that the line between reality and myth is always blurred, and that the aspects of ourselves we are most ashamed of can prove to be the source of our greatest strength, and even our salvation.

Marie Manilla is an award-winning novelist and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Prairie Schooner and Mississippi Review, among other journals. 

West Virginia Center for the Book
West Virginia Library Commission

Learn more about the 2021 Great Reads from Great Places book selections in this video series