Send Me down a Miracle » (Reprint)

HAN NOLAN is the author of several books, including Dancing on the Edge which won the National Book Award and Send Me Down a Miracle, a National Book Award finalist. She lives with her husband on the East Coast.

A sleepy, God-fearing community in Alabama erupts in chaos when a flamboyant artist from New York City has visions of Jesus.

The ALAN Review

Fourteen-year-old Charity's summer vacation is anything but boring when Adrienne Dabney comes to town. An artist, Adrienne is conducting a sensory-deprivation experiment to heighten her creativity. Locking herself in her family home for a month, she emerges, claiming to have been visited by Jesus. Send Me Down a Miracle is about relationships among family, among friends, and among members of a small town. It is also about the power of hope and faith, in self and in others. Torn between being the good little preacher's daughter and her adoration of Adrienne's free spirit, Charity grows to see her father, whom she idolizes, as fallible. The glamour Charity at first saw in Adrienne fades as she realizes apparent caring and encouragement may have selfish undertones. Han Nolan uses dialect and characterization to lighten the tone of Charity's discoveries. The use of first person, as if Charity is recalling the past event, is face-paced and rarely falters.