Jude, the son of God (well, one of the sons, anyway) is trapped in Purgatory. Thankfully, he has friends on the outside: Nettie, a Victorian woman with unknown powers; her daughter Essie, commander of an army of unbaptized children; and the late, great Ernest Hemingway.

On their journey to break Jude out of his interminable imprisonment, they run afoul of clockwork angels, celestial bureaucrats, and the Great Potato Himself. Can they overcome the very powers that be in order to free their friend and rewrite the system of the afterlife?