oklahoma city (okla.)

The author presents humorous narratives about his mother's dating experiences in the 1950s and his own experiences--the truth of which the author is ambiguous about--as a young, single, straight-but-assumed-to-be-gay Oklahoma man in New York City in the 1990s.

Oklahoma police detective Grace Hanadarko makes some bad choices leading to her drinking and driving and causing a terrible tragedy. Then a strange angel named Earl shows up to help her work things out and bring her back to faith. This task becomes hellish when Grace discovers that a teenage boy--Zack Lacey--found dead in the Oklahoma River did not commit suicide, as authorities thought, but was the victim of a hate crime.

Oklahoma police detective Grace Hanadarko gets caught in the middle of a war between the white-supremacist Sons of Oklahoma vigilantes and Hispanic and black street gangs when one of her friends gives shelter the wife of the Sons' leader. In retaliation, the gangs kidnap her nephew's critically ill friend and threaten to let the disease take his life, unless Grace can find him first.