“Finding Angels” by Rhett DeVane

 As sweet as the tea required at every Southern ladies’ luncheon, Finding Angels: A Heartfelt Collection of Love, Laughter, and Hope (2025) by Rhett DeVane is sure to bring a generous helping of light-hearted pleasure to your reading list. This collection of fifty short stories and poems is best savored slowly—like daily devotionals—but you may find it hard to resist reading them all in one sitting.

The opening and title story, “Finding Angels,” features a character aptly named Angel and centers on writer Loo Rain, appearing in her publisher’s tent at Florida’s real-life Worm Grunting Festival. DeVane excels at capturing the quirky charm of the Panhandle: truck stops and diners, You-Pick blueberry farms, country yards littered with rusting cars and farm equipment, wicker porch swings, and tables groaning under turkey, chicken pie, banana muffins, cane syrup, and chocolate layer cakes. She doesn’t shy away from the less romantic realities either—mosquitoes, hurricanes, and humidity. Her fictional world also abounds with cats (the author is clearly a devoted cat rescuer), dogs (including a yellow lab named Spam), and “yard rats” (better known as squirrels).

Her language sparkles with Southernisms—“bejabber,” “sorta,” “porker,” “diddly,” “gosh-awful,” “humdinger,” and, of course, “butt ugly”—leaving no doubt this isn’t New York City or an Ivy League campus.

Many of the stories begin with awkward or unpleasant encounters that transform through unexpected kindness. In “Final Leg,” a tense moment between airline seatmates ends with an offer of hospitality. “The Hug” follows a day that spirals from bad to worse—until a stranger provides exactly what the title promises. Another tale features a gruff woman who feeds both stray cats and unhoused neighbors, delivering a touching surprise ending.

DeVane’s characters span all ages and circumstances: a dying man playing Santa one last time, a menopausal woman “so hateful, some days she can barely tolerate her own company,” an awkward elderly man who feels reborn when he dances, a bird-loving nursing home resident, and children whose small acts carry big emotional weight. Miz Zelda, convinced aliens are stealing her underwear, is one of several delightfully eccentric figures. A few characters from DeVane’s earlier novels—Piddie Longman and Elvina and Hattie Davis—make appearances, but most are fresh creations. These are ordinary people who, as one character says, know “the true value of being ordinary”—though some prove to be extraordinary in unexpected ways, including one couple whose angel-and-devil bedroom role-play goes hilariously awry.

The collection closes with a poem in which DeVane promises to “tell the stories. To nudge a laugh. / To share what truly matters.” Finding Angels delivers on that promise with tender moments, sweet smiles, and the occasional tear.

Rhett DeVane

A native Southerner, Rhett DeVane writes fiction steeped in the people, color, and flavor of the Florida Panhandle. She is the author of seven Southern fiction novels—The Madhatter’s Guide to Chocolate, Up the Devil’s Belly, Mama’s Comfort Food, Cathead Crazy, Suicide Supper Club, Secondhand Sister, and Parade of Horribles. Suicide Supper Club won first place for fiction in 2014 from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association. She also co-authored the political drama Accidental Ambition with retired Florida state senator Robert McKnight and the vampire parody Evenings on Dark Island with Larry Rock.