The Miracle Stealer (review)

In the small town of Paradise, whose name has become ironic after a spate of bad luck and economic failure, six-year-old Daniel is an icon of hope. Ever since he was three, when he was found alive after a tunnel collapsed on him, he's been considered to be doing the Lord's work by healing, granting wishes, and bringing miracles. Only Daniel's older sister, Andi, seems to be able to see Daniel as a little boy who, as she reassuringly reminds him, "ain't special," and who is the projection of human wishes rather than a miracle worker. As Andi watches the town's focus on Daniel become more invasive and threatening, she decides to execute a dramatic scenario that will debunk his myth once and for all. Connelly writes with taut intensity, cranking up the foreboding and dropping in hints about the bad outcome of Andi's plan in her narration. The book is uncompromisingly credible in its treatment of the adults, including Andi's mother, who are sacrificing Daniel's real childhood in their determination to believe him something magical. The story is less effective, however, with Andi's planned hoax (a fake car crash from which she and Daniel would rise mysteriously alive), a strange and elaborate effort that pretty clearly would have failed in its goal even if it hadn't gone wrong in a jarringly weird and implausible way. The hints of genuine divine intervention complicate rather than counterpoint, leaving the book unclear as to whether Andi's view is completely discredited or just too rigid. Chris Lynch's Hothouse (BCCB 10/10) explores the phenomenon of a wishful community's belief with more bite and nuance, but this offers some emotional exploration of the clash between human need and human reality.