Alicia von Stamwitz is a freelance writer and editor in St. Louis, Missouri, whose specialty is hagiography (the study of saints). She was born in Cuba at the start of the Cuban Revolution and left with her family when she was a toddler. Her great-grandparents were first cousins who bribed the bishop in Havana to marry them. She says, “I blame their incestuous union for all my defects.”