In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for ... sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model. So when Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.

Breath and Bones blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a romp across the American Wild West.

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"During the day, I remain inside. I take a back route to the kitchen, keep the shutters closed, and avoid the courtyard at all costs. For there's a mob without--people peering through the gate, calling out my name. They know I am in here. They think I'm praying."

Her name is Bonne Mirabilis, a young girl born "God's bastard," the illegitimate daughter of a saint who was burned in the church of Saint-Porchaire. She is also the inadvertent savior of Villeneuve, a small French town beset by plague and under siege, suspicious of witches and longing for miracles. Bonne's time has finally come to deliver herself from a storied past into sanctity, in ways that will cross the line between miracles and magic and will pull in a feverish sculptor, a Jewish magician, a dwarf and former court jester, and a wealthy widow pregnant with the baby who will determine her fate.

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