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  • Published: 8 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780553447606
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $32.99

Anatomy of a Miracle

A Novel*



The brilliant, provocative new novel from the critically acclaimed author of Want Not about a paralyzed young veteran's sudden, mysterious recovery--a stunning exploration of faith, science, celebrity, and mystery, now in paperback

“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.

  • Published: 8 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780553447606
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Jonathan Miles

Cultural historian Jonathan Miles has a personal engagement with St Petersburg and its people that dates back to the Soviet era. Born in a trunk, Jonathan has been travelling ever since and currently lives in Paris. Having taken a first from University College, London, he received his doctorate from Jesus College, Oxford. Early books include studies of British artists Eric Gill and David Jones. Most recently, Medusa, The Shipwreck, the Scandal and the Masterpiece, a voyage through the artistic, political and moral clashes of Restoration France, and Nine Lives of Otto Katz, the tale of a flamboyant Soviet spy, were both published to international acclaim.

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Praise for Anatomy of a Miracle

Praise for Anatomy of a Miracle

  • "Jonathan Miles has written a novel whose comic moments alone make it a wonderful read, but Anatomy of a Miracle quickly becomes so much more: an intense, and intensely profound, meditation on how an extraordinary event might test the limits of both scientific and religious belief. What a superb writer; what a superb book."
  • -- RON RASH, New York Times bestselling author of Serena and Above the Waterfall