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Reviewed by:
  • The Question of Miracles by Elana K. Arnold
  • Deborah Stevenson
Arnold, Elana K. The Question of Miracles. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015 [240p] ISBN 978-0-544-33464-9 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys     R Gr. 4-6

Moving from sunny California to rainy Oregon is bad enough for eleven-year-old Iris, but her real grief is for the loss of her best friend, Sarah, who died in an accident only a few months ago. She defaults into friendship with geeky Boris, who loves Magic: The Gathering and lecturing on obscure subjects, and she finds him [End Page 298] a surprisingly sympathetic partner in her investigations into ways to communicate with lost loved ones. She’s even more intrigued to discover that Boris is being considered a possible miracle by the Catholic Church, having recovered as an infant from birth defects that should have prevented him from surviving; she thinks that learning more about his miracle may help her better understand why Sarah died when Iris didn’t (“Did the universe love Sarah less than Iris?”). Arnold makes Iris a highly compelling protagonist, managing to capture her resentment and anger while keeping her sympathetic as well as interesting. Her friendship with Boris evolves believably from a blend of annoyance and resignation to genuine appreciation, and her epistemological journey is realistically knotty and disappointing as adult attempts at wisdom repeatedly miss the mark (“It seemed to her that Father Santorno’s response was the worst answer she had ever heard”). Iris’ grief for Sarah is unusually well captured, touching on the huge importance of the best friend relationship and the amputation felt after such a loss. This is therefore a tender yet smart story that will resonate with readers who work through their emotions by brain as well as heart.

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