The Third Miracle Book

A statue of the Virgin Mary in crying tears of blood. A young girl has been cured of a terrible disease and the word has spread. Thousands of the faithful are suddenly making the pilgrimage to the church of Saint Stainislaus on the hope that their prayers will be answered. Why is this happening? The pastor believes it is because a woman who lived in the convent, Helen Stephenson, is a saint - and that the miracle is God's grace at work. Faced with pressure from the media, his flock and the Vatican itself, Cardinal Cahill appoints as his postulator - a priest whose sole purpose and duty will be to investigate the miracle - Father Frank Moore. Handsome, articulate, and at one time, the Cardinal's golden boy, Frank has sunk into self-imposed exile. He doubts his faith. Lost and hopeless, he sees this appointment as a possible path toward redemption. Fulfilling his duty to interview everyone who ever had contact with Helen Stephenson, Frank meets her daughter, Roxanna, who he learns, hates the church and has never forgiven her mother for leaving her to live in a convent. Frank also discovers that he and Roxanna have more in common than either of them would have expected. Do miracles actually occur? The Third Miracle asks. Or do we create them ourselves, in hopes of fending off the eternal darkness every human being fears.

Publishers Weekly

Deftly plotted, dramatic and entertaining, this is a provoking mystery about the nature and rewards of faith and forgiveness. The title refers to the third miracle that must be attributed to a person before he or she can become a saint. Father Frank Moore, a Catholic priest who's lost his faith, is charged by his Cardinal to investigate a petition "for the pursuit of the ordinary process of canonization for Helen Stephenson." Calling himself "the miracle-killer," Frank lost his faith after his previous investigationinto the canonization of his mentor, Father Falconeled to a discovery that shattered his own soul and disillusioned the community that had venerated the beloved priest. Since then, Frank has been living in an SRO hotel and taking his meals at a homeless shelter. But the powerful and power-loving Cardinal Charles Cahill tracks him down to give him the assignment. Frank, who feels his life has no purpose, who loves no one and for whom God is a childhood memory, has no choice but to accept it. So he begins inquiring into the background of Stephenson, a widowed lay person who lived and died in a convent in Queens and in whose name a statue of the Virgin Mary is said to cry tears of real blood. Probing into her past and the miracle cures that have taken place in her name, Frank meets Stephenson's bitter, hostile, divorced 30-year-old daughter, Roxanna, with whom he falls in love. A special canonization tribunal eventually is sent from Rome, with the resulting ecclesiastical trial proving as suspenseful, tense and exciting as any secular one. Vetere (screenwriter of Gangster Apparel) writes thin prose that often reads like a screen treatment. But his pacing is sure, and he strikes a nice balance between the sacred and the profane, exhibiting an appreciation of the mysteries of faith that is as genuine as his sense of the gritty day-to-day. Film rights to New Line Cinema, to be made into a feature film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. (June)