Miracle at St. Anna

By: James McBride

Narrated by: Ted Daniel

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, and Deacon King Kong

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.

Critic reviews

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

What a story! What a storyteller!

One would have to be as good a writer as McBride to capture the gentle brilliance this grand but succinct tale of the 92nd infantry. Of McBride's many tales, this one most quickly grabbed me by the imagination then gently took me through a thoroughly immersive experience of nearly lost (but vital) threads of history.

Just as Sam the Giant gently carried the dying boy tenderly swaddled in a tattered refugee rags through the 1200 year-old villages of Tuscany during an 80 year-old war, so McBride weaves this tale's dark threads of mystery, betrayal and retribution with humanity's brighter threads of innocence, courage, redemption and child-like faith to render what is brightest and most victorious in the human struggle.

Though this is a tale of the first US Negro fighting battalion, and each character's thoughts on the subject of race emerge in each narrative and narration, the book is not about race, because McBride seems to know that "race" and racism as a topic is divisive. Rather, this tale of how a lethal struggle, when war has rendered everyone a pauper, and thus equal, the example of child like faith, devotion and innocence can elevate an entire village and erase the issue of skin color altogether.

McBride's tale captivates us by gathering the threads of the reader's best self, then having so captured us in its web, the story takes us through the mysterious suspension if disbelief to the hellishness of WWII, while weaving history both ancient and recent to spin a tale so believable, I couldn't swear it was fiction. We know these characters are real because we've met them all. In fact, when we are being our best selves, we know we have been each one of them, in turns.

Not for nothing, the narration was sublime. Not since Frank Muller's Prince of Tides or Green Mile has a narrator so captured the essence of mixed race community. The narration was a whole separate work of art in itself, deserving a separate review all its own!

El desarrollo de la historia y la fuerza de los personajes en ella.

La relación entre el soldado americano y el niño herido, único sobreviviente del ataque y el amor que los une, así como el amor de de padre de Ludovico hacia Renata y la fortaleza de ella. Toda la historia es maravillosa.

The accent were spot on.. brilliant voices

The pain staking accuracy and in-depth knowledge of the author make you feel your were right there within the mountain and the small church. We’ll done!

The connection of the men and community

I truly enjoy the work of James McBride immensely. He has the ability to pull you in from the first word until the very last 💨

Interesting take on history

This was an interesting perspective on WWII and the Black soldiers we do not hear about.