Edgar Mint was run over by a mail truck when he was seven years old. The fact that he survived is a miracle -- a miracle performed by Dr. Barry Pinkley.

Edgar's life, which was one of poverty and neglect on an Indian reservation, takes a new turn. His grandmother has been placed in a nursing home and his drunken mother, believing him dead, has left the reservation for parts unknown. After three months in a coma, Edgar finds himself in St. Divine's Hospital in Globe, Arizona.

His home is a ward with three men. The nurses mother him and all of his needs are comfortably met. He feels an overwhelming need to comfort the mail carrier who ran over him, to let him know that he is alive and okay. Edgar takes this quest as his mission in life.

Dr. Barry, fired for his unorthodox medical practices, takes an obsessive spectre-like interest in Edgar's life. He perceives saving Edgar a continuous part of his destiny, his reason for living, his responsibility. As Edgar's health improves, he has to leave the hospital, being only unable to write.

With a Hermes typewriter and toilet puck in hand, Edgar travels to Willie Sherman School at the Fort Apache Reservation. Willie Sherman, a boarding school cum Indian orphanage, is where his only other known relative, Uncle Julius, works as a janitor. Edgar's life keeps taking worse turns at Willie Sherman, until God opens a door. Through all of his tribulations, his drive to find the mailman remains.

Udall's "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint" is full of self-deprecating laughter, sorrow, hatred, and love. This Spur Award-winning novel wrenches compassion from the reader's very soul as Udall desribes the high-spirited adventures of this small, damaged, half-Apache little boy.