Miracle at St. Anna

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Now a Spike Lee film, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, Deacon King Kong, Five-Carat Soul, and Kill ‘Em and Leave

James McBride’s powerful memoir, The Color of Water, was a groundbreaking literary phenomenon that transcended racial and religious boundaries, garnering unprecedented acclaim and topping bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction—in a universal tale of courage and redemption inspired by a little-known historic event. In Miracle at St. Anna, toward the end of World War II, four Buffalo Soldiers from the Army’s Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit and behind enemy lines. Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less respect than the enemy they are fighting, they discover humanity in the small Tuscan village of St. Anna di Stazzema—in the peasants who shelter them, in the unspoken affection of an orphaned child, in a newfound faith in fellow man. And even in the face of unspeakable tragedy, they—and we—learn to see the small miracles of life.

This acclaimed novel is now a major motion picture directed by Spike Lee.

Praise for The Miracle at St. Anna:

“McBride creates an intricate mosaic of narratives that ultimately becomes about betrayal and the complex moral landscape of war.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Full of miracles of friendship, of salvation and survival.” —Los Angeles Times

“Searingly, soaringly beautiful…The book’s central theme, its essence, is a celebration of the human capacity for love.” —The Baltimore Sun

“A haunting meditation on faith that is also a crack military thriller.” —Entertainment Weekly

“An outstanding novel about World War II inspired by the famous Buffalo Soldiers…so descriptive that I feel as though I’m an eyewitness to everything that happens emotionally on the frontline.” —The Dallas Morning News

“A miracle in its own right…McBride’s prose is stunning. His ability to bring to life an actual historical event (the massacre at St. Anna and the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Division) is a gift.” —Rocky Mountain News

“Sweetly compelling… McBride combines elements of history, mythology and magical realism to make this a story about the little things like life and forgiveness and shared experience.” —Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Riveting.” —Newsday

James McBride is an accomplished musician and the author of the National Book Award–winning novel The Good Lord Bird, the bestselling American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung, Miracle at St. Anna, and Deacon King Kong, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill ‘Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, McBride is also a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.US

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