Miracle at St. Anna - Hardcover

McBride, James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573222127 ISBN 13: 9781573222129

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2002

Synopsis

In a historical novel based on a real-life massacre at St. Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, during World War II, four African-American soldiers from the 92nd Division, a band of partisans, and a young Italian boy come together to experience a miracle. By the author of The Color of Water. 175,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

James McBride is an award-winning writer and musician. He has been a staff writer for The Washington Post, People magazine, and The Boston Globe. His memoir and tribute to his mother, The Color of Water, spent more than two years on the New York Times bestseller list, was published worldwide, and was the winner of the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. As a composer, he won the American Music Theater Festival's Stephen Sondheim Award for his jazz/pop musical Bobos, and has composed songs for Anita Baker, Grover Washington, Jr., and Gary Burton. A jazz saxophonist, he has performed with Rachelle Farrell and with legendary jazz performer Little Jimmy Scott.

Reviews

Following the huge critical and commercial success of his nonfiction memoir, The Color of Water, McBride offers 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. Toward the end of 1944, four black U.S. Army soldiers find themselves trapped behind enemy lines in the village as winter and the German army close in. Pvt. Sam Train, a huge, dim-witted, gentle soldier, cares for the traumatized orphan boy and carries a prized statue's head in a sack on his belt. Train and his three comrades are scared and uncertain what to do next, but an Italian partisan named Peppi involves the Americans in a ruthless ploy to uncover a traitor among the villagers. Someone has betrayed the villagers and local partisans to the Germans, resulting in an unspeakable reprisal. Revenge drives Peppi, but survival drives the Americans. The boy, meanwhile, knows the truth of the atrocity and the identity of the traitor, but he clings to Train for comfort and protection. 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. Agent, Flip Brophy. Author tour. (Feb. 4)Forecast: The multi-talented McBride he is an award-winning composer as well as a writer acquits himself admirably as a fiction writer. Fans of The Color of Water and readers with wartime memories will make up a strong base audience for his first novel.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

McBride, the author of the best-selling memoir The Color of Water (1996), turns his hand to fiction in this stirring tribute to the human soul. Sent to Italy to fight under unbelievably harsh and unfamiliar conditions, the members of the Ninety-second all-black, segregated Buffalo Division distinguished themselves both on and off the battlefield during World War II. Cut off from their unit during a botched advance, four GIs become the improbable guardians of a traumatized Italian boy who has lost the power of speech and the ability to remember his past. Refusing to abandon the child, Sam Train, an illiterate giant of a man, insists on carrying the boy to safety. In a remote mountain town, the Americans learn from a handful of suspicious villagers, a rag-tag band of Italian partisans, and a remorseful German soldier that the boy was the only survivor of a brutal massacre. Although McBride touches on issues of race, atrocity, and evil, these diverse characters are able to transcend such human failings through love and faith. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Having conquered nonfiction with The Color of Water, which dwelled on the New York Times best sellers list for two years, journalist McBride takes a chance at fiction. He roots his novel in actual events, relating an encounter between the 92nd Division's Buffalo Soldiers and a little boy from a Tuscan village where a terrible massacre has occurred.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573222127
• ISBN 13: 9781573222129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 257