The Saint Louisans

Families, like cities, go through periods of birth, decay, and renewal. Things can get complicated when it all happens at once.

As Margot Desouche, the powerful matriarch of one of Saint Louis’s founding families, succumbs to 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 Margot’s children ally with a volatile community activist and pledge to tear down Margo’s 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 apparent—and not so apparent—must 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steven Clark was born in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He served in the United States Army and graduated in 1980 with a BA in English from the University of Missouri–St. Louis. His play The Love Season won the Source Theater’s 1985 Best Play award. His play The Tragedy of Hypatia was performed at the 2001 Director’s Showcase at the University of Missouri–Columbia. His novel The Green Path was published in 2012, and his stories have appeared in Black Oak Presents, Mozark Press anthologies, and UMSL Litmag. His play The Buffalo was part of Spectrum Theater’s 2011 festival. His screenplay Searching for Jesse was a finalist in the 2014 Missouri Stories Screenwriting competition, earning him a fellowship.