Book Tour & Giveaway: The Patron Saint of Lost Girls by Maureen Aitken

 

Literary Fiction / Short Story Collection

Date Published: 09-16-2025

Publisher: Wayne State University Press

In 1970s and '80s Detroit, the city wrestles with an unending economic downturn, increasing violence, and white exodus to the suburbs. Amid all of this is twentysomething Mary who is just trying to grapple with her identity in a world filled with uncertainty.

In this collection of linked stories, we follow Mary as she seeks to cope with and withstand hardship and confront her fears of exploitation, abuse, and death. Along the way, she delves into the complex yet nurturing relationships with her family and friends who teach her to love better, live fuller, and question power. The Patron Saint of Lost Girls presents an unflinching tale of life in the late twentieth-century postindustrial Midwest.

 

Excerpt

ONE NIGHT, WE decided to bury the rat. I’m still not sure how it all started. Mel had chosen her outfit, a black, velvet dress and spike-heeled boots. She had begun the long process of getting dressed, while Laura and I sat on the couch and sipped vodka gimlets, listening to a stuck car whir its wheels. It was the end of winter, when the season’s snow compacted into ice, and any warmth created slick pools on the frozen surface. This simple fact of nature wreaked havoc in the streets, where cars slid together, and people walked in a perpetual state of almost falling. Since moving here, I still hadn’t adjusted to the bitter winter, or the spring that came too late. Today, all life felt slippery. Laura was explaining, for example, that she’d changed her mind about our plans. She did not, in fact, want us to meet her new boyfriend at a bar. “M-m-m-maybe we should leave Tom at the Lex,” Laura said. “Let him stew.” She flicked her cigarette and held her head high. Through half a year of speech therapy, Laura had resolved most of her stutter. 

“Did he cheat on you?” 

“No,” Laura said, and turned away. Very dignified. Tactfully composed. Distant as a landscape. It would take hours to mete out a few facts: Tom had said something rude; Laura, in response, had gotten drunk; Laura was a little thing, so two drinks were one too many. “I didn’t know I c-c-could drink six shots of tequila,” Laura said. “Threw up in his car, too. S-s-serves him right.” Mel lived on the sixth floor, where the heat collected, so she’d opened the windows for air. The car wheels still spun in the alley and when we popped our heads out over the window ledge, we saw the front right tire had slipped into a pothole, and the remaining wheels rotated on a sort of soggy ice rink.

About the Author

Maureen Aitken’s short-story collection, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls, received a Kirkus star, the Nilsen Prize, and the Foreword Review INDIE Gold Prize for General Fiction. It will be reissued in September, 2025 by Wayne State University Press. Her stories have earned a Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, a Loft Mentor Award, an award from Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize, and two Pushcart Prize nominations. It was also nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. Her stories have been published in Prairie Schooner and New Letters, among others. This is her second story featured in The Missouri Review’s Blast section.

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