This courtroom drama by judge and first-time novelist Martin Clark appears, at first blush, to have little to do with matters spiritual. For starters, the protagonist, Evers Wheeling, is as self-involved and unenlightened as heroes come. Wheeling, a wealthy North Carolina judge, is stopped on his way to work by a car-dealer named Ruth Esther English. Ruth Esther, an Elle MacPherson-look-alike who, mysteriously, cries white tears, asks him to help her recover $100,000--money she stole several years before from an antique dealer. Wheeling agrees to help, and heads to Utah on a wild search. Along the way, his wife, Jo Miller, cheats on him, files for divorce, and winds up with a bullet through her head.

But "The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living" has more in common with Isabelle Allende's magic realism than with Scott Turow's legal thrillers. And Ruth Esther, it turns out, has more in common with Clarence Oddbody, Jimmy Stewart's "second-class" guardian angel, than she does with Elle. By the time you learn why Ruth Esther's tears are white, you will also have learned a few valuable lessons about how to live a wonderful--and meaningful--life