In Phoenix Rose, the second novel by Michael Bailey, a family is torn apart after a horse foaling goes terribly wrong; a sickly man recounts getting mauled by his neighbor's dog; an undead priest is reborn into the world a hundred-fifty years after his untimely death; two brothers run for their lives through a dead field of wheat. Holding all of this together is a young boy named Todd, whose survival pivots on the balance of life and death, and a deranged mental patient with a burnt rose tattoo, whose reality is paradoxical.