Robert S. Nelsen

PLOT TREATMENT:  SPIRITS COLLIDING

Main Characters:                                               Minor Characters:

Maude Flowers                                                 Sam Flowers (Maude's husband)

Angel Flowers (Maude's daughter)                    Adam Flowers (Maude's dead son)

Will Hudson                                                      Semele Hudson (Will's wife)

                                                             Professor Cox (Will's mentor)

                                                                         Rachel Chambers (Will's friend)

                                                                         Sheriff Hodges

                                                                         Reverend Bob

Setting:  Montana and Chicago

Maude Flowers narrates the entire novel, even though she is dead.  At her request, Will returns to Montana to be the preacher for the Valley.   He goes to the cemetery where Maude is mowing her son's grave with a beard trimmer, and he tells Maude that he is responsible for her son's death.  On the day that Will left the Valley, Will traded Maude's son, Adam, a knife for a look at Angel, asleep in her bed; later that day, Adam was killed when he fell on the knife while castrating a calf.  Maude's husband, Sam, rapes Angel, his daughter, at the high school where she teaches (Sam sexually abused Angel since she was a child). 

Will's wife, Semele, dies from an ectopic pregnancy and is buried in the cemetery.  Angel, who is also pregnant (because of the rape), has a miscarriage and buries the fetus at the cemetery.  She confronts her father at the high school, cuts him badly with the knife that killed Adam, and then runs away to Chicago, hitching a ride with a trucker. 

Maude takes Will to Chicago to find Angel, who is working there as a prostitute.  While in Chicago, Maude and Will discover that Angel's clients include a Polish alderman and an African-American preacher.  Maude and Will see Angel, but she runs out onto the ice on Lake Michigan and apparently drowns.  In a snowstorm, they return to Montana and, in the cemetery, bury a casket filled with mementos of Angel.  Meanwhile in Chicago, Angel is beaten by the Polish alderman.  She is nursed back to health by Professor Cox and one of Will's friends, Rachel Chambers. 

Rachel, jealous of Professor Cox's relationship with Angel calls Will; and Maude and Will fly to Chicago. They find Angel in bed with Professor Cox, and Cox has a stroke.  Will confronts the alderman and is badly beaten.  After arranging for Professor Cox to be cared for, Maude and Will take Angel back to Montana. 

In church, Will preaches to the congregation but lusts after Angel and directs everything to her as a-not-very-veiled-love-sermon.  Will meets Angel, who has begun to wear only white, at the cemetery, and Angel asks Will to baptize her.  When Will baptizes Angel, he sees a trickle of blood run down her leg, and he decides to resign his position as pastor.

Angel's father attempts to rape Angel.  Angel kills her father in a knife fight.  When Angel rejects Will's overtures, a drunk Will takes a bloated cow to the cemetery and desecrates the cemetery with the cow's entrails.  Maude and Angel confront Will at the cemetery, and he begins wildly swinging a knife.  Maude is accidentally killed as she tries to take a knife away. 

At Maude's funeral, Angel gently places the knife that she used to kill her father into Maude's grave and puts her arms around Will.  She convinces Will to put the knife that killed Maude into the grave also.  As he kneels to do so, the sheriff tries to take the knife away for evidence.  They fight and the knife falls into Maude's grave.  Snow begins to fall, never reaching the ground, and people all see something different-some see the heavens open up, others see Maude float up out of the grave, Angel sees Maude greeted by Adam and her own mother, Will sees Maude kiss Angel, then feels Maude kiss him and thinks he might see Semele, but is not sure.  Maude has the final words in the novel: "And me, what did I see?  I saw everything.  I saw this whole story, saw it from everyone's perspective, from beginning to end.  I saw what the people of the congregation and the Mormons saw.  I saw what Angel saw.  And I saw what Will saw.  And I felt it all.  I felt the snow and the sun.  I smelled the freshly mown grass and the moist dirt.  And I was grateful.  I didn't understand.  I thought I would.  But I was grateful, very grateful.  For I was blessed.  I was blessed in this Valley, blessed with this existence, blessed."