<DIV>Mary Faith Rapple is smart, pretty in a rangy, gray-eyed sort of way—and very definitely pregnant. Not an unusual occurrence in the sleepy town of Due East, South Carolina. But when Mary faith announces that she will have a virgin birth and her father, Jesse Rapple, owner of the Plaid King filling station, vows to uncover the truth, the sparks begin to fly. Spirited, evocative, and utterly delightful, this brilliant novel by Valerie Sayers explores the love and loneliness, the hopes and fears, the unspoken yearnings of the human heart. <I>Due East</I> is a sweet and tender novel. Like Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, Sayers writers with compassion of lonely characters whose lives are slightly off center, and her best scenes have a fine sense, sharp edge of irony. Her chosen territory is the human heart.</DIV>