Steve Malo was raised a good little Catholic boy, taught the ways of God and religion by Sister Katherine, and the good nuns. He later grows up to discover that the nuns that taught him were feeding him a bunch of self-serving bull about God, the Devil, good and evil. Disillusioned and angry, he becomes a selfish, slash and burn conman, taking everything he can with no concern about anybody else. He revels in his greed, selfishness and lack of morality.
Years later, a fraudulent stock scam starts to go very bad and it looks like he’s headed for prison. A chance meeting at the moment of crisis leads him to make a Faustian deal with a devil-like character, Lu, to save himself, in return for his soul. He soon dies in an accident and Lu collects on their deal. Facing a future life alone for all eternity, he takes Lu’s offer to return to life and work for him. His first assignment: seduce, capture and destroy the heart and the spirit of a beautiful, innocent, life-affirming young woman whom Lu has been after for eons.
Stella Goodman is an angelic beauty who loves life, and tries to be a positive force in the world. Never having thought much about anything but himself and his own needs, Steve learns from Lu something about the real nature of human evil. Evil is, proclaims Lu, like baseball, and you win and break hearts one hit, one soul at a time. Evil wins games in the slow drumbeat of everyday, garden variety type evil that besets this world.
Lu becomes Steve’s mentor and father figure. He’s the bad guy you love to hate, and a consummate baseball fan who dresses wildly and returns to the story at times, wearing various costumes, in various personages. He wants to crush the spirit of Stella, a particularly illusive goal in his ongoing war against her innocent love of life.
Stella opens up Starlight Florals, a New Orleans floral shop with lofty ambitions. Soon Steve is helping her with her business, wooing her, and winning her trust at the same time. With Lu’s constant encouragement and guidance, Steve learns the finer points of seduction and betrayal. He strategically courts Stella, helps her make the business a booming success, gains her trust and love, and finally marries her, professing his great love, all the while scheming with Lu to betray and destroy her.
Soon he begins pulling her life and spirit apart one step at a time. He destroys the business, betrays her by having an affair, then deceives and manipulates her. But his growing reluctance to continue his betrayal, and the unexpected emergence of an actual conscience make him unable to give her one last kick in the heart.
Something unforeseen has happened, and he's actually fallen in love, and begins to feel the first stirrings of human compassion. But if he doesn't complete his deal, he’ll have to return to his own private hell for all eternity. He becomes a changed man, and returns to Stella with a full confession of everything.
But she forgives him and together they try to beat Lu and save their souls from his wrath. But she and Steve cannot match Lu's power. Accepting their fate, first one, then the other agrees to forsake their own lives for the other. This very act of giving, of ultimate sacrifice, has a debilitating effect on Lu, and his power is diminished.
On showdown night, they run into the Cathedral to find Father O'Malley, a whiskey-soaked shadow of a priest, lacking in courage and will, but their only chance for survival. With Lu raging like a madman and throwing fire around the church square, help arrives just in time. All of the important people in their lives collectively confront Lu with the only power to really fight evil: The Power of Love. Lu is finally defeated, Steve and Stella’s souls are saved, and O’Malley finds the courage and love of God within.
Stella’s angel within is saved, and Steve, a changed man, finds himself looking back on what the good nuns tried to tell him about God, the Devil, good and evil, with new found understanding
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