is the fictionalized account of an impressionable, star-crossed lad coming of age in tiny Bristow, Arkansas, graduating from The University of Arkansas, attaining a degree from Candler School of Theology, and aspiring for a ministerial appointment in Arkansas from the Methodist bishop. Bristow is where he learned to figure, process unpleasantries, and was abducted. The University of Arkansas is where he excelled academically, married his campus sweetheart, and survived the initial attempt upon his life by an unknown assassin. Georgia is where he served a student ministerial appointment in rural Greene County, resisted the wiles of a skirt-tugging parishioner, survived a near fatal automobile wreck precipitated by an ambitious small town constable, navigated through numerous personality conflicts of parishioners, and narrowly avoided a cleverly calculated scheme by the anonymous assassin. Arkansas is the setting for Deveauxs initial appointments while awaiting the elusive promotion. Interesting personalities abound: an enigmatic district superintendent, the church member in charge of porno films shown at the fire department, the unpredictable church organist, and the unknown assassin. The salient significance of the books title is discovered in the LAST line of the text.

Ninth in the Agatha Award-winning series that's been hailed as engrossing, Steps to the Altar finds California folk art expert Benni Harper preparing for two upcoming weddings, digging up clues to a decades-old unsolved murder-and struggling with a very personal crisis of the heart...