What do You think about Miracle At St. Anna (2003)?
I had just read another McBride book (the one that one a prize, was it National Book Award? I think so, The Good Lord Bird), so I wasn't sure about taking up another so quickly, but Miracle at St. Anna wasn't even in the United States! I figured...has to be quite different that America in 1850.Sure enough, this novel was about a group of black American soldiers during World War II, who fought in Italy.Well, shit, it was just the best. Author McBride is just a special case, for me. I bet not everyone on earth likes him, although his earliest book sold 1.3 million, just in America, and I bet, just from the dozens of sources he uses in this "miracle" book who are Italian, this book will sell a million copies in that country, alone. Oh! Sidetracked, again. I want to tell you why he is a special case, for me. To do that, all I have to do is use a small quotation from Miracle in St. Anna.I won't give away any plot lines, but...it was 1944 or 45, I guess, the last year of the war. So you figure, people are going to die in the book, right?! Here's my quote. A man who is shot sees a beautiful sight before he dies, hence the quote:He understood it all then, who God was, why the mountains were formed, why rivers ran from north to south, why water was blue and not green, the secrets of plants, and his own purpose in running up the ridge after [another character]. Unquote...then:Deep and comforting silence descended on everything he had known and would ever know. UnquoteMcBride just tells a story his old WWII uncle would be proud of, and one that makes me really really admire Mr. McBride.Now I'm allowed to say, Best Book I've Read All Year--it's January!
—Shawn
"On December 12, 1944, Sam Train became invisible for the first time. He remembered it exactly.He was standing on the bank of the Cinquale Canal, just north of Forte dei Marmi, in Italy. It was dawn. The order was to go. One hundred and twenty black soldiers from the 92nd Division bunched behind five tanks and watched them roll toward the water, then clumsily waded in behind them, rifles held high."So starts James McBride's Miracle at St. Anna, a book that grabs you and never lets you go until the last page. Sam Train and three other soldiers become separated from their division and rescue an Italian boy, before finding their way to the picturesque village of St. Anna di Stazzema. The people of the village are enchanting. There is Ludovico, who has rapidly reproducing rabbits hidden under his bedroom floor, his fierce and fiery daughter Renata and the village witch Ettora.I loved this delightful and sweet story. It is perhaps not on par with McBride's book Song Yet Sung, but a worthy read.
—Booknblues
My edition of this book had a rather romantic looking pastel image of a boy sat on a rock so I had a completely misleading idea of what the story would be like. As it turns out this is an extraordinary fictionalised account of a battalion of black US soldiers in Italy during the second world war who end up rescuing an orphaned boy and hiding out in a rural village. It's a no-holds barred, sometimes brutal account of war, but manages to always keep a sense of deep humanity. The descriptions of how someone can keep hold of basic decency while all around them is carnage and madness is quite incredible.
—Corinna Edwards-Colledge
