Richard Dietrich

Earth Angel Richard Dietrich

Earth Angel is a wryly narrated nostalgia piece about the laughable but lovable 1950s in small town America. On movie dates then the hormonal honey pot was constantly stirred by the likes of such voluptuous Hollywood angels as Marilyn Monroe, Janet Leigh, Liz Taylor, Jane Russell, Sophia Loren, Brigette Bardot, Jayne Mansfield, and on and on. This was especially tormenting if you dated a girl who looked like Marilyn Monroe but whose angelic ambitions were only of the biblical sort. This is the fate of the novel's hero, 'Reverend Steve,' a young lad considering the ministry and with biblical ambitions of his own but struggling with an erotic imagination that is over-stimulated by the appearance in his Ohio town of so many gorgeous angels, both on screen and sitting right next to him at the drive-in movie. Well, where else could this lead but to out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy? The twist here is that the teen who gets 'knocked up' is the virginal 'Reverend Steve.' And the baby he delivers, a charming and surprisingly philosophical girl named Toby, is a member of your family. But what does it mean that it was an angel who knocked him up? Or that this results in another virgin birth?