Miracle at St. Anna - Hardcover

The Buffalo Soldiers were the black American troopers of the 92nd Division who fought and died in Italy in World War II. In Miracle at Sant'Anna their remarkable story has been "novelised" by James McBride, bestselling author of The Color of Water. To get at the emotional and metaphorical heart of the fate of the so-called "Negro Division", McBride has invented a number of black soldier heroes and antiheroes; Sam Train, Stamps, Bishop, Hector, etc. Using the eyes, ears and voices of these and other soldiers McBride tells how the Buffalo Soldiers fought, loved, cursed, cooked, stole, whored, wept, suffered, killed, and mule-trained their way up the war-torn Italian peninsula. It's in many ways the standard war story, told in McBride's admirably calm, judiciously lyrical prose: this is an author unafraid of saying things the simple way, nor of utilising slang or cliché: "he fell asleep and slept like a dead man", "the big galoo was sitting in the path of twelve thousand Germans, and he couldn't even read a map".

And yet, and yet. This isn't just your average bit of combat fiction. These are black American soldiers, two generations from Africa and slavery, fighting in the cradle of Christendom, the birthplace of the Renaissance. With cleverness and subtly McBride makes great play with the perceived and supposed distinction between the savage uncouthness of the "jitterbugging negroes" and the refined and elegant beauties of Tuscany and Rome. And it's when these distinctions are truly disproved, or even upended, that this skilful, intelligent, deeply felt novel carries frank emotional power--earning it comparisons with the likes of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain. --Sean Thomas

Stunning...Incandescent prose which at once marks up a new voice and calls up Tennessee Williams, Isaac Bashevis Singer and streetwise black America rolled into one (Financial Times on The Color of Water)

James McBride's first book, The Color of Water, a memoir published in 1996, sold more than 1.3 million copies and was a bestseller for two years. Now he has produced a novel, Miracle at Sant'Anna. It evokes such power and beauty, pathos and love, that it may very well outstrip its precursor...A searingly, soaringly beautiful novel. Some may argue that the epilogue, which brings the story sharply back to the present, does so perhaps a trifle too cleverly. That was not the case for me. I found it crisp and free of sentimentality.
The book's central theme, its essence, is a celebration of the human capacity for love. Even in the course of virtually unbearable warfare and deprivation - with carnage and devastation, hunger and hopelessness blotting out all other realities - people are able to touch each other, to care. That, McBride insists, is the enduring, immortal miracle of the human race, for all its imperfections.

(Baltimore Sun)

A searingly, soaringly beautiful book (Baltimore Sun)

A powerful and emotional novel of black American soldiers fighting the German army in the mountains of Italy around the village of St. Anna of Stazzema in December 1944. This is a refreshingly ambitious story of men facing the enemy in front and racial prejudice behind; it is also a carefully crafted tale of a mute Italian orphan boy who teaches the American soldiers, Italian villagers and partisans that miracles are the result of faith and trust....Through his sharply drawn characters, McBride exposes racism, guilt, courage, revenge and forgiveness, with the soldiers confronting their own fear and rage in surprisingly personal ways at the decisive moment in their lives (Publishers Weekly)

McBride displays an ear for storytelling and language, but here he also proves he can devise a plot that gathers intensity as it accelerates (People)

A mesmerising read that counterpoints the horror of war with man's capacity for love (Publishing News)

Displays both an astute political awareness and a sensitivity to the life of the human soul, however much it may be disguised by hurt or violence . . . Om this occasion, the combination produces a war novel which is both brutally stark and yet able to explore the spiritualities of its characters . . . There are more than a few similarities between this book and Louis de Bernieres's Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Both books carve the softest features from the hardest rock. (Sydney Morning Herald)

War, cruelty, passion, heroism and race crammed into one lyrical tale (The List Glasgow)

A haunting meditation on faith that's also a cracking military thriller . . . MIRACLE flows along with cool, clean prose . . . Profoundly spiritual but rarely preachy, MIRACLE turns out to be less a Good Book than a good book - a miracle in itself (Entertainment Weekly)

exellent first novel (The Sunday Telegraph)