Anatomy of a Miracle

October 15, 2017

His body shattered by gunfire in Afghanistan, Private First Class Cameron Harris has spent four years in a wheelchair at his family home in Biloxi, MS. Then one day, while smoking outside the local convenience store, he stands up. Now scientists, journalists, and even the Vatican want to investigate this miracle, but Cameron's not so sure; he's got secrets. From the author of Dear American Airlines and Want Not, which both achieved best-book status.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 11, 2017
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.

January 1, 2018
A paraplegic vet suddenly rises to his feet, catching the attention of religious leaders, reality TV producers, and skeptics.Miles' third novel (Want Not, 2013; Dear American Airlines, 2008) is framed as a poker-faced feat of reportage about the case of Cameron Harris, a former U.S. soldier who lost the use of his legs when a Soviet mine exploded near him while on duty in Afghanistan. Four years later, back home in Biloxi, Mississippi, he's sitting outside a convenience store waiting for his sister when he discovers he can stand and walk. Cue a cultural scrum over America's sacred and secular divides. Cameron is deemed a vessel of God by the locals, and a Vatican investigator arrives to determine if a legitimate miracle has occurred; the store becomes a shrine of sorts ("It was more like 'somone...opened a Cracker Barrel at Lourdes'") and, soon, a moneymaker for its bemused Vietnamese immigrant owners; Cameron's VA doctor puzzles over the illogic of his healing; and a reality TV producer locks down Cameron (and his charismatic, down-home sister, Tanya) for an investigative show, though the network execs press a more Honey Boo Boo-ish angle. Lost in the financial and theological squabbling, naturally, is Cameron himself, who's bearing a secret that complicates (though doesn't quite resolve) his "miracle." Miles possesses a rare and admirable command of structure and style, shifting smoothly from Afghan patrol tactics to Catholic doctrine to neurological science; his sentences are thick with data, wittily delivered. (The store-cum-shrine is populated with "drunks, solicitors, teenagers in groups of more than three, coupon users, check writers, shirtless men, hundred-dollar-bill breakers, fake-ID presenters....") Sometimes that's a disadvantage, as the novel's info-soaked prose threatens to overwhelm the story's psychological tensions. But the closing pages reveal an emotional vulnerability as potent as its research.An expertly shaped tale about faith in collision with contemporary American culture.

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January 1, 2018

Satire at its best is constructive social criticism, and Miles (Dear American Airlines; Want Not) is perfecting this craft in the 21st century. Outside a convenience store in Biloxi, MS, Cameron Harris waits in his wheelchair while his sister runs in to buy beer. Cameron is an alcoholic. Cameron is a paraplegic. Cameron is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. And, on this day, as he stands up and begins to walk, Cameron becomes a miracle. His hermetic life is soon turned upside down with floods of prayer requests and a reality television crew following him around. While Cameron's doctor searches for a scientific explanation for his recovery in the medical literature, the Vatican dispatches an officer from the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints to open an investigation. As the world focuses on the mystery of his recovery, Cameron struggles to conceal a long-held secret that complicates our understanding of divine agency. VERDICT With sincerity and wit, Miles pens a strong, sardonic rumination on the religious boundaries of the miraculous. [See Prepub Alert, 9/15/17.]--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.