cover image Expect a Miracle: The Miraculous Things That Happen to Ordinary People

Expect a Miracle: The Miraculous Things That Happen to Ordinary People

Dan Wakefield. HarperOne, $19 (257pp) ISBN 978-0-06-069225-4

After an introductory section that traces the conflict between miracles and science from the Gospels to modern times, novelist and popular spiritual memoirist Wakefield (Returning: A Spiritual Journey, etc.) explores miracles of healing and recovery, love and re-creation, encounter and presence. He uses stories of ordinary people (rabbis, pastors, prisoners, factory workers), recording many dramatic experiences of the miraculous. Wakefield urges us to recognize the ways in which our lives are shaped by everyday miracles--the taste of food, the love others give, etc. Indeed, according to Wakefield, the power of miracles arises out of their existence in ordinary lives and out of the openness with which people receive them. Not merely another book about the role of the supernatural in a skeptical society, Expect is a lively collection filled with honest revelations and searching questions for those seeking to experience the miraculous in everyday life. (May)