by Stephanie Knipper
Written with great heart and a deep understanding of what it feels like to be "different," The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is a novel about the lengths to which people will go to protect the ones they love.
Sisters Rose and Lily Martin were inseparable when they were kids. As adults, they've been estranged for years, until circumstances force them to come together to protect Rose's daughter. Ten-year-old Antoinette has a severe form of autism that requires constant care and attention. She has never spoken a word, but she has a powerful gift that others would give anything to harness: she can heal things with her touch. She brings wilted flowers back to life, makes a neighbor's tremors disappear, changes the course of nature on the Kentucky flower farm where she and her mother live.
Antoinette's gift, though, puts her own life in danger, as each healing comes with an increasingly deadly price. As Rose - the center of her daughter's life - struggles with her own failing health, and Lily confronts her anguished past, they, and the men who love them, come to realize the sacrifices that must be made to keep this very special child safe.
"This charming debut will appeal to those seeking elements of magic realism, family relationships, and personal growth, as well as Sarah Addison Allen fans." - Library Journal
"The sections where the narrator gets inside Antoinette's head and explains what she's feeling are interesting, even captivating at times, and finely written. A novel that tries to be a family drama, a romance, and a story of disability might have succeeded better if it had focused more on Antoinette." - Kirkus
"The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin is the kind of book that invites you home, sits you down at the kitchen table, and feeds you something delicious and homemade. You will want to stay in this world, where new relationships bloom out of broken ones, sisters find one another again, and miracles really do occur. Antoinette will stick in your head like a beautiful song." - Tiffany Baker, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Giant of Aberdeen County
This information about The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stephanie Knipper based much of the story of The Peculiar Miracles of Antoinette Martin on her own experience in raising a daughter with severe disabilities. She lives with her family in Kentucky.
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