Items related to A Miracle for St. Cecilia's
It's a bitter cold Ash Wednesday in Dorsetville, New England, where the last wool mill shut down five years ago and only Yankee grit gets its citizens out of bed for another day of facing challenges with wry humor. Poor in worldly goods but rich in faith and compassion, they have been bound together for generations by the gaudy monolith of St. Cecilia's church, long a white elephant to the Catholic archdiocese and now slated to close-after the last mass on Easter Sunday.
Father James Flaherty despairs of turning the parish finances around, or even of fixing the cantankerous furnace. What will become of his flock? And of their beloved eighty-two-year-old Father Keene, increasingly eccentric but beatific, who had planned to live out his days at St. Cecilia's? Diners at the Country Kettle-where plates have never matched but you get the best cup of coffee in the valley-worry, too. Among them is waitress Lori Peterson, who needs her own miracle-a bone-marrow match for her husband, Bob. And Matthew Metcalf, a rash young genius in trouble at Dorsetville High for hacking into its computer and inadvertently exposing some embarrassing secrets.
Delightful and moving, with a cast of endearing and quirky characters, A Miracle for St. Cecilia's will warm hearts and enchant readers everywhere.
Father James Flaherty despairs of turning the parish finances around, or even of fixing the cantankerous furnace. What will become of his flock? And of their beloved eighty-two-year-old Father Keene, increasingly eccentric but beatific, who had planned to live out his days at St. Cecilia's? Diners at the Country Kettle-where plates have never matched but you get the best cup of coffee in the valley-worry, too. Among them is waitress Lori Peterson, who needs her own miracle-a bone-marrow match for her husband, Bob. And Matthew Metcalf, a rash young genius in trouble at Dorsetville High for hacking into its computer and inadvertently exposing some embarrassing secrets.
Delightful and moving, with a cast of endearing and quirky characters, A Miracle for St. Cecilia's will warm hearts and enchant readers everywhere.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Katherine Valentine is an American folk artist who has been a regular guest on Lifetime's Our Home show and an instructor with the New York City Museum of American Folk Art and the Brookfield (Connecticut) Craft Center. Her 1980 near-death experience, the subject of several books, has been featured on television shows, including Good Morning America.
From Publishers Weekly:
Folk artist Valentine seems to strive to emulate Jan Karon in this first novel, but is more aptly compared to Thomas Kinkade, another artist whose recent novel takes place in a New England community eerily like Dorsetville, which is Valentine's setting. In this town that time forgot, Catholic priest Father James frets over the archdiocese's decision to close down his church, leaving his aging parish without a place to worship. With the exception of some surprisingly mean-spirited depictions of Dorsetville's Congregationalists and a few other minor characters, Valentine offers a cast of saints: a young family fighting cancer, an elderly prayer warrior and several kind-underneath-it-all curmudgeons. Beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Easter Sunday, the novel is basically an introduction to these characters, which is to be expected this is the first in a series of Dorsetville books. Valentine favors redundancy, sometimes repeating information as if it were new. Moreover, the "miracle" at the end is confusing and appears from nowhere, as do a number of other plot contrivances such as, for example, the sudden appearance of a long-lost relative of the prayer warrior. Still, Valentine's prose is readable, and unlike most Christian fiction, this novel features devout Catholics, who resemble their fictional Protestant counterparts in every way except one: they drink. (When Father James is offered coffee heavily spiked with Jack Daniels, he enthusiastically accepts.) While Valentine's portrayal of the Catholic Church is undoubtedly sugarcoated, some readers will relish her prettified vision.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherThorndike Pr
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0786247398
- ISBN 13 9780786247394
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages474
- Rating
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