“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.
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“Edoardo Ballerini skillfully moves between narration styles as he sifts through the layers of the story. When portraying the journalist, he is matter-of-fact, cutting deftly through a dense thicket of information in order to maintain momentum. Ballerini voices the miraculous Cameron and his sister, Tanya, with a charisma peculiar to well-drawn Southern characters, never letting the facts or their circumstances get in the way of a good tale. He has the knack of perfectly delivering the many deadpan observations generated by this larger-than-life story and embodies its wide cast of believers and skeptics with a vibrancy that pulls the listener irresistibly along. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
“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…A superb book.”
— Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author“A remarkable combination of medical mystery, satire, and war story. Like Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, it captures the long-lasting effects of war by focusing on those for whom war is only a tangential thing somewhere far away.”
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Jonathan Miles is the author of Dear American Airlines, Want Not, and Anatomy of a Miracle. A former columnist for the New York Times, he is a contributing editor to such magazines as Details, Garden & Gun, Men’s Journal, and Field & Stream. His work is frequently anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Crime Writing. A former longtime resident of Oxford, Mississippi, he currently lives along the Delaware River in rural New Jersey.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.