Saint Loony

Come one, come all, to witness Saint Loony—and hear the confessions of a clown from the Crescent City.New Orleans, 1954. Petey “Loony” deLune—a Creole Catholic circus Pierrot driven by a monastic devotion to clowning and crippled by alienating addictions—breaks his trauma-induced mutism after years of hiding a terrible truth. He confesses the memories, mistakes, and misdeeds that drove him away from the Crescent City and into the Big Top as a pilgrim and penitent.Sharing anecdotes from circus life and reflections both on the saintly role of clowns and on sainthood as a whole, Loony recounts his origins as a suppressed orphan in Jim Crow Louisiana; the friendship with a Black youth that brought him to life; the fateful tragedy that cut his childhood short; and his culpability in that unspeakable crime."Saint Loony" explores the importance of joy in a hurting world; white passivity in racist violence; the collapse of moral binaries in a racial society... and, above all, whether someone who transmutes his private shame into public joy can become holy despite complicity in atrocity—whether a man who failed to act in the face of evil can ever be redeemed.***Praise for Richard Canal Tini