The Wonder of All Things

In this follow-up to his bestselling novel The Returned, about the miraculous reappearance of the dead that became a television series (ABC’s Resurrection), Mott returns to miracles—this time with the story of young Ava Campbell, who saves the life of her best friend, Wash, in the aftermath of tragic air show accident. Thanks to a cell phone camera on the scene, millions witness the spectacular feat of Wash’s near-fatal wounds disappearing. Mott again transforms a small, peaceful town into a media maelstrom center as thousands descend on Stone Temple, N.C., for the chance to view or, more urgently, be healed by the astonishing Ava. A televangelist, Reverend Isaiah Brown, arrives to take advantage of the situation and forms an uneasy alliance with Ava’s father, Macon, the town sheriff. In an unfortunate touch of melodrama, Ava is increasingly debilitated every time she heals someone, and the book turns into a Jodi Picoult–type discourse on the rights of a healer threatened by her own powers versus the rights of those who wish, and perhaps deserve, to be healed. An overabundance of side stories—Isaiah’s complicated relationship with his damaged brother; Macon’s second wife Carmen’s difficult pregnancy; Wash’s troubled relationship with his newly returned father—tarnish the novel. But Mott shines in telling of the sweet, developing love between Ava and Wash. (Oct.)