The Miracle by
John L’Heureux
is a thought provoking and engrossing novel about death, dying,
and faith. The novel focuses on three
Catholics (two priests and the rectory housekeeper) in a small seaside village
in the aftermath of a possible miracle.

The
Miracle is set in Boston and a
small seaside village in New Hampshire
during the 1970s. St Matthew’s is a church known for its traditional views. Father
Boyle has been there forever and its Irish working class parishioners have come
to accept his drinking problem as "human weakness".  Then Father Paul LeBlanc was assigned to the
parish as its new curate. He was too young, too politically controversial, and way
too sinfully handsome, in other words he was causing waves. Enter Father Mackin, a 30-year seminary professor with rigid traditional
views. It was not long before Father Paul, "the wild priest", found
himself before Monsignor Ed Glynn for revaluation and reassignment. His new
parish is Our Lady of Victories, a small seaside community in New
Hampshire. The placement solved two problems for
Monsignor Glynn: Father Paul was out of out of earshot of the vocal Catholics
of Boston and his longtime friend, Father Tom Moriarty, bedridden and dying
from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), would have his
parish covered, a companion, and would be able to die where he felt comfortable.
Father Tom is as opinionated as Father Paul, only unlike the younger priest Father
Tom has lost his faith and has begun to doubt the existence of God. Also ion
the household is Rose Perez, the rectory housekeeper. Rose is a 32-year old
single mother whose sexual activity is a constant source of guilt for her. Another
source of concern is her 16-years old daughter, Mandy. Mandy is equally sexually
active, but also a drug user. She has found the answer for both her cravings in
the arms of Jake Faria, motorcycle riding drug
dealer. One morning, Rose’s worst nightmare occurs. Jake calls Rose to come
home because Mandy is sick. She arrives home to find Mandy dead from a drug
overdose. That is when the "so called" miracle occurs. Although a
number of witnesses including Jake, a doctor, her landlord (a former army
medic), and Father Paul, verify Mandy’s death, after Rose locks herself in the
room with Mandy’s body shrieking, praying, and begging the Virgin Mary for mercy,
Mandy suddenly awakes startled at her mother’s strange behavior. From this
point on in the novel, the characters including Rose, Father Paul, Dr. Forbes,
and Jake, struggle to understand the meaning of this apparent miracle and try to
formulate their reaction to it. Finally, add into this mix Annaka
Malley, a local beautiful with a scandalous past who begins
attending the church in an attempt to discover whether she should go to law
school or become a nun.

This book offers a refreshing
escape from today’s sex scandals in the Catholic Church to an earlier innocent era
when a priest can get censored for his views on birth control and bussing, and
women really worried about going to hell for having "impure" (that
means "sexual" for you post-1960 babies) thoughts. The characters struggle
and agonize over their sins. Finally, the characters also struggle with deeper religious
issues like faith versus doubt, desire versus commitment, regret and hope, and
logic versus the "incomprehensible". I feel setting the story in the 1970s
was counterproductive to the impact of the novel. Doubt, fear, guilt, and hope
in miracles are as relevant today as it was in the 1970s. Rose and Mandy are excellent
representatives of the generational split over sexual issues. My other
criticism is that the resolution of the conflicts should have lingered with
equally slow angst and agony. The conclusion was too abrupt and thus unsatisfying,
it was just, oh well, the end.

            John L’Heureux
is an author and professor at Stanford
University. He is the former Director of the Creative Writing
Program at Stanford (1993-94, 1996). He has received the Dean’s Award
for Excellence in Teaching (1981 & 1998). He has served as both a staff editor and contributing editor for The
Atlantic Monthly. His stories have
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s, and The
New Yorker. He has written
sixteen books of poetry and novels. His most recent novel is The Miracle
(2002).

The
Miracle by John L’Heureux will challenge
the reader to face a number of the great questions of life including faith,
death, and the inexplicable. It is gritty, but not crude. It is an excellent
beach book that will keep the thinking reader pondering its issues late into
the night. I recommend this book.

© 2004 Su Terry

 Su Terry: Education:
B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S. in Library Science from
Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S. in Religious Studies/Pastoral
Counseling from Fairfield University, a M.Div. in
Professional Ministry from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, a Certificate in
Spirituality/Spiritual Direction from Sacred Heart University. She is a
Licensed Minister of the United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor in
Library Science at Dowling College,
Long Island, NY.

Categories: Fiction, Religion, Grief