My next book that I read was entitled “Send me down a miracle” by Han Nolan. This book really hit home with some of the issues explored in the book. It begins with the main character Charity Pittman, a fourteen year old girl, describing her life and her family. She lives in a small town of Casper, Alabama with her sister Grace and her father who happens to be the town Reverend. Early in the book we discover that someone new has come to town and her name is Adrienne. She is from the city and happens to be an artist, somewhat messy and free-spirited, and her new ideas and ways of living put the town in a crazy uproar. The town, a quiet small southern town, has “proper” ways of behaving and Adrienne does not fit their expectations or their mold.
As we learn that Charity is trying to discover herself, being the right age of figuring out school, friends, boys and such, she wonders about being an artist. Adrienne has so kindly offered art lessons but Charity’s father doesn't see it to be of importance to take art lessons. Going to school, working, and more importantly attending services on Sundays which entails staying very true and strong to your faith is what Charity’s father has in mind for her, as well as following in his footsteps. However this left no time for Adrienne. Her father, trying to keep the town together through faith, helping others, has somewhat lost himself in preaching. His wife, Charity and Grace’s mother has left for a birdcage convention that she attends every year, although this year, it seems to be different to Charity and the others around town.
Taking art lessons anyway we find that Charity is starting to find that she is moving away from following her father’s footsteps and wanting to have her own path in life, to become her own person. But these thoughts and feelings become back burner material when Adrienne, after locking herself in her house for a month for an artistic experiment, claims that she has seem Jesus. Of course the entire town, Reverend Pittman and especially Charity, flock to her house to find out the reality of this claim. Throughout the book we see the battle between both sides of believing, that Jesus has appeared and the Adrienne is just crazy. This stirs up a lot of faith issues and problems not just for each person but for who they are in the world and for the town as a whole. The book follows Charity’s struggles to find herself and make her father happy. Charity’s family deals with its own problems and so do the other families in town, questioning their lives and faith for the first time.
This book is a great read! I loved it! Not only do we see the main character struggle but we see everyone in the book struggle with one issue or another. It brings the idea of moral issues, religion, and identity into play. Not only would this book be great as a discussion tool for the issues at hand, but for faith of any kind in something in a person’s life. It would work great as a tool to discuss how we find our own path in life and what happens when adults, parents, others in our lives try to tell us how to live. I ended this book feeling closure, feeling lost and feeling found. The book really makes you wonder. Furthermore, to top the whole story off, the ending of the book makes you stop and question whether or not the story was as told or if it was a metaphor for something larger. As in, was Adrienne just someone sent to help the town discover themselves or was she someone who actually came and visited to have a vacation away and to practice her “art”. I would definitely read this book again and recommend it to others out there!
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