We're born unfinished, in need of everything-love, food, attention, care. The linked stories in Guardians & Saints explore the ways in which modern orphans fail to thrive. A girl loses her mother only to re-find her, in altered form, in a grim institutional afterlife. A group of friends spins helplessly around the death of a beloved teacher when his selfless pedagogy is called into question. Faced with the incapacity of those they depend on, Diane Josefowicz's characters appeal, with varying degrees of success, to stand-ins: teachers, mentors, therapists, guardians, and, occasionally, saints.