A grateful saint -- a saint whose life of work and devotion to God wouldn't have been the same without the loyalty. the friendship of a lion or a blackbird, an eagle or a deer.

Other saints in these stories -- two of the liveliest are women -- deal cleverly with animals who act up: snakes in one instance, greedy geese in another.

But in each of these stories, the commonality of all living things is luminously celebrated. The ten saints, whose biographies are given in the last pages, are named on the back of this jacket.