Anatomy of a Miracle
A Novel*
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2.9 • 9 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
“Funny, bighearted...Miles specializes in giving fully rounded humanity to characters who might elsewhere be treated as stock figures...pitch-perfect.”
— New York Times Book Review
"Miles is a writer so virtuosic that readers will feel themselves becoming better, more observant people from reading him."
— Los Angeles Review of Books
A profound new novel about a paralyzed young man’s unexplainable recovery—a stunning exploration of faith, science, mystery, and the meaning of life
Rendered paraplegic after a traumatic event four years ago, Cameron Harris has been living his new existence alongside his sister, Tanya, in their battered Biloxi, Mississippi neighborhood where only half the houses made it through Katrina. One stiflingly hot August afternoon, as Cameron sits waiting for Tanya during their daily run to the Biz-E-Bee convenience store, he suddenly and inexplicably rises up and out of his wheelchair.
In the aftermath of this “miracle,” Cameron finds himself a celebrity at the center of a contentious debate about what’s taken place. And when scientists, journalists, and a Vatican investigator start digging, Cameron’s deepest secrets—the key to his injury, to his identity, and, in some eyes, to the nature of his recovery—become increasingly endangered. Was Cameron’s recovery a genuine miracle, or a medical breakthrough? And, finding himself transformed into a symbol, how can he hope to retain his humanity?
Brilliantly written as closely observed journalistic reportage and filtered through a wide lens that encompasses the vibrant characters affected by Cameron’s story, Anatomy of a Miracle will be read, championed, and celebrated as a powerful story of our time, and the work of a true literary master.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A military veteran's miraculous recovery from a disabling injury is the springboard for Miles's affecting novel. Twenty-six-year-old Cameron Harris has been a paraplegic for four years when, in the parking lot of a convenience store in his native Biloxi, he rises from his wheelchair and walks. The public's response is predictably madcap: Cameron's doctors are incredulous, the devout begin venerating the parking lot as a religious shrine, and everyone in the "crap bazaar" that follows seeks some way to capitalize on the phenomenon, from the store owner who starts hawking religious paraphernalia to the reality television director hoping to film Cameron's story to the local politician who tries to persuade Cameron to run for office. Miles (Dear American Airlines) keeps a perfect poker face as he put his characters through one absurd situation after another, but he laces his tale with moments of philosophical seriousness in which Cameron ponders whether his miraculous healing obligates him to serve a higher purpose. Well-drawn characters and their witty repartee help to give the book's wild and wacky events a very human frame of reference.
