"O, Sinners" is a literary novel for adults, about 140,000 words long. It is a coming-of age story, a love story, a ghost story, and a detective story, set in a mythical fifty-first state, the "Commonwealth of Amazon" on the southeastern seaboard.
The novel is a fictional scholarly edition of a memoir, "My Confessions by Willy Wilson", narrating Willy's unrequited love for Lula Smith, an enchantress (in the literal sense: she's a witch...) and future U.S. Senator from Amazon. Willy finds himself sharing Lula's house in the city of Gum (the state capital). He describes her painful life as a single mother during the summer of 1976, as she prepares for surgery to treat cervical cancer. One incident eventually defines their relationship: an accidental killing. Willy nurses Lula through the surgery. In the aftermath, they are hounded by a police detective. Finally, Willy enacts his love by making a terrible sacrifice.