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Summary
Summary
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'swill warm hearts and enchant readers everywhere.
Author Notes
Katherine Valentine is an American folk artist. She was an instructor with the New York City Museum of American Folk Art and the Brookfield (Connecticut) Craft Center. She lives in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A noted folk artist debuts with a warmly affirming story, the first in a series, of a congregation's attempts to save its church from being closed down. As in the popular Mitford novels, the setting is a fictional small town where everyone knows and cares for everyone else and even the curmudgeons have hearts of gold. In Dorsetville, in New England, the Catholic Church is St. Cecilia's, and its priests are Father James Flaherty and his elderly assistant, Father Keene. Dorsetville was once a prosperous mill town, but the congregation has shrunk, and on a bitterly cold Ash Wednesday morning, when the ancient furnace, as usual, is not working, Father James gets a call from his superior requesting a meeting to discuss the church's fate. Father James is a good and caring priest, and he's concerned that, if the church closes down, his elderly flock will be bereft of the comfort and community it offers, and aging Father Keene will have to go into a retirement home. Told that the church must be closed on Easter Sunday, Father James realizes that only a miracle will save it. As he worries, prayers are answered in unexpected ways: much-liked parishioner Bob, ill with cancer, undergoes a successful bone marrow transplant; Father Keene, lost in a snowstorm, is found sheltering in widow Harriet Bedford's house; and Harriet, who has been visiting her sister, a Mother Superior, is reunited with her long-lost granddaughter. St. Cecilia's itself still needs a miracle, which it seems to get when a hologram of the Virgin Mary, created by young computer whiz Matthew, appears in the church. Though crowds flock to see it, Easter Sunday is only hours away. But fittingly, on Easter morning Father James receives a letter that in its way offers a miraculous solution to his problems. A beguiling mix of characters in a sunny story that faithfully emphasizes the positive. Sweet soulfood only.
Booklist Review
It will take a miracle to save St. Cecilia's, the Catholic church in the small Connecticut town of Dorsetville. The town has fallen on hard times since the woolen mills shut down, and the church, an ornate relic of more prosperous days, serves just a handful of parishioners. When word comes from the archdiocese that St. Cecilia's will be closed right after Easter, Father James Flaherty worries about what will happen to elderly and addled Father Keene--and to Lori Peterson, waitress at the Country Kettle, whose husband, Bob, needs a bone-marrow transplant, and to Harriet Bedford, who found solace in the church after a family tragedy--not to mention numerous others who are too old or too poor to travel all the way to St. Bartholomew's in Burlington for mass. Just in time, an event at the church draws crowds and donations, but the real miracle comes from another direction. This book is the first in a projected series. Though it is less charming and more heavy-handed than Jan Karon's beloved Mitford novels, Valentine's clergyman as central character and close-knit, small-town setting make comparisons inevitable. A Catholic spin in the successful Mitford formula could be popular, and libraries should buy accordingly. --Mary Ellen Quinn
