The author of The Good Life (1999) returns with his second: a hardhitting, at times sidesplitting tale of trust, temptation, and redemption. Hudson City is a bust, a pockmark on New York's upstate. You can't even buy good
coffee in this tired industrial town. Then Sue, a lovely Afro-Asian, is linked to a
strange healing; citizens and officials insist, for reasons not entirely spiritual,
that a miracle has occurred. People dream about the Miracle Girl, and, presto, kidney
stones are dissolved, that sort of thing. Soon, pilgrims throng to the city, accompanied
by oppressively hot winds. But the miracle plays the devil on Quinn, a lapsed Catholic
employed by his diocese to sell Church properties. It's all he can do to drive the big,
blunt, "shut this miracle down" Bishop through crowds. (In one of the funnier scenes,
the Bishop orders him to defy a police barrier.) Things worsen when Quinn, who made a pile
calculating available square footage for a prior employer, is asked to work his old magic
to house pilgrims. His arduous schedule coincides with three dilemmas: romantic (his
girlfriend, to whom he long ago gave herpes, has grown mysteriously distant), moral
(a slick-speaking "friend" proposes a shady deal with the city's chief landowner),
and spiritual (his televised fainting spell, promptly spun as religious ecstasy, leaves
him confused). Scribner plants his hero knee-deep in scruples, revealing the gray side
of corruption, its agonizing logic and bantering alliances. We experience up-close the
weather, temper, and architecture of a city hobbled enough to justify extreme gambits;
we root for a couple who cling to their fading relationship, and their fading town, with
a stubbornness bordering on piety. Some touches chafe--ours is a hero who takes the measure
of himself in the mirror and hasn't had a dream he can't remember; his meditations on
physical space feel strained; Sue seems a trifle underwritten--but, overall, these are
quibbles. A riotously edifying take on civic and private responsibility in an age of elaborate
morals.
-- Kirkus (starred)