The following edition was used: White, Edmund. A Saint From Texas. Bloomsbury, 2020.

Born in the late 1930s, twins Yvonne and Yvette Crawford are raised by a stern and lecherous father, a Texas oil tycoon who strikes it rich late in life, and a pretentious and shallow stepmother. Both sisters yearn for something greater, more fulfilling than life in Texas.

Early on, Yvonne is captivated by French culture. When she elects to spend her junior year in college in Paris, determined to find a husband, she meets Baron Adhéaume de Courcy, ten years her senior, a dashing and charismatic aristocrat. After a whirlwind courtship, Yvonne and Addy wed. Initially, Yvonne is much taken by the Parisian life of wealth and culture to which Addy introduces her. She is happy. She is far from Texas. Quickly the two have children, twins.

The bookish, nerdish Yvette, for her part, finds reward in studying dense works of philosophy and theology. She is fascinated by the implications of God and the reward of rigorous devotion to religious meditation. Raised a Baptist, Yvette is nevertheless drawn to the Catholic Church and its centuries-old theology. When she is still in college, she singlehandedly rescues a boy trapped under an overturned truck, an act quickly defined as a miracle. Although she does not see herself as worthy of conversion, she volunteers to serve at a convent in one of the poorest rural regions near Jericó, Colombia. She begins a quiet life of contemplation and service. She comes under the powerful influence of a charismatic Swiss-born bishop named Oscar Geldbach, a controversial figure who tirelessly preaches a gospel of rigorous self-denial and sacrifice. As time goes by, Yvette fears she might be falling in love with the bishop.

Life among the wealthy in France quickly sours for Yvonne. She lives in a lavish apartment in central Paris. Yet she is lonely. Her husband strays, conducting numerous affairs, most notably with her only friend. The two lovers briefly involve Yvonne in a threesome relationship but the two become closer and eventually exclude Yvonne. Addy’s family treats Yvonne with disdain. In the meantime, Addy begins to drain Yvonne’s considerable wealth to refurbish his family’s ramshackle medieval chateau in Provence in southern France. His taste is extravagant, and soon Yvonne’s father back in Dallas worries that the Baron might pose a problem.

Meanwhile Yvette converts to Catholicism. Her meditations center on her belief that she is a bride of Christ and that her life should be devoted to pious contemplation and humble service. When she visits a woman in the final stages of cancer, Yvette prays over her. Within days the cancer is gone. The locals believe she is a saint. Yvette cannot, however, entirely ignore the presence of Mercedes, a much younger Brazilian nun. Yvette struggles with her sexual desire for Mercy. On a pilgrimage to Rome to visit the Pope, Yvette, sharing a room with Mercy, yields to temptation and engages in a brief interlude of touching and caressing. When she returns to Colombia, she confesses her transgression to Bishop Oscar who is unforgiving. Yvette accepts his penance. She is dispatched to a remote parish in the Colombia hill country far from Jericó, far from Mercy.

Yvonne begins to see the desperation of her situation. Her husband does not even pretend to love her anymore. A brief affair she conducts in Paris gives her conniving husband sufficient evidence to ensure she will never divorce him without risking losing her children. When Yvette visits Rome, the two sisters, joined by their father and stepmother, have an awkward reunion in Paris. It is then that Yvette reveals to her sister that when they were growing up in Texas, their father repeatedly molested her. Soon after the Paris visit, the father dies. Yvonne is named executrix of the estate and finds that, despite her husband’s profligate spending, she and her sister will be comfortable for the rest of their lives.

In an act of genuine contrition, Yvette gives most of her inheritance to her Order. Yvonne finds this out only after she receives a short letter from Mercy informing her that while on her missionary assignment Yvette took sick and died. Determined now to be free of her reptilian husband, Yvonne plots to murder him with the help of a rouge priest who sees Yvonne’s marriage as a moral quagmire. Together, the two stage an accident that involves pushing a drunk Addy off a steep cliff on the grounds of his family’s chateau. The “accident” is never investigated by local authorities. Yvonne, suddenly free, dedicates herself to promoting Yvette for canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church. The process is elaborate and, as Yvonne quickly finds out, expensive. Some thirty years after Yvette’s death, Yvonne is alone. Her daughter was a suicide, her son living in Rome is estranged from her. Yvonne is still committed to making her sister a saint. In addition to that effort, she dedicates herself and her wealth to heroic service in the cause of helping AIDS patients.