Book Review: The Miracle at Assisi Hill
The Miracle at Assisi Hill. Pat Camalliere, Campat Publications, 2 November 2022, Paperback, Hardback and eBook, 347 pages.
Reviewed by Robert H. King, Jr.
The Miracle at Assisi Hill is a novel that will appeal to lovers of several genres. It is first and foremost a historical fiction novel inspired by the life of a real woman, Venerable Mother Mary Theresa Dudzik, who immigrated from Poland to Chicago in the late 1800s and is currently awaiting the final steps needed for canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church. But it is also a mystery, a devotional, and a love story all in one.
The fictionalized story begins with Cora Tozzi, an amateur historian. Having recently survived oral cancer and doubting her Catholic faith, Cora takes on a new task. She agrees to research and co-write the history of a local convent and the order of nuns who founded it in the early nineteenth century. To immerse herself in her work while her husband Cisco is off playing golf in Arizona, she temporarily moves into the convent, and then is stuck there when COVID-19 hits. Then further calamity hits when Cisco suffers a stroke and is hospitalized due to COVID, Cisco cannot leave Phoenix, nor can Cora go to be by his side. Frustrated and worried, Cora presses on with her research, which leads her to the story of the nun who founded the American branch of the order, Mother Mary Josepha (modeled on Venerable Mother Mary Theresa), who is now far along in the canonization process toward becoming a saint. Cora also befriends a younger, harmonica-playing nun who is experiencing encounters with a spiritual being who may be Mary, the Mother of Christ, or someone else. But whoever this spiritual being is, she tells the younger nun that Cora’s help is needed to do the research necessary to help support the canonization process for another nun who was like a sister to Mother Mary Josepha and died in Texas in the late eighteen hundreds. Hoping to strike a deal with the apparition, Cora prays that by helping in this endeavor, Cisco will be cured, and she sets off to discover long-hidden facts about the deceased nun.
The story has been meticulously researched, and the characters drawn from this research are skillfully developed in such a manner that the novel feels more historical than fictional. The book will appeal to lovers of mystery novels as Cora attempts to understand who the spiritual being is and what the historical facts are that might support the other nun’s path to sainthood. The novel will interest the religiously inclined because, although fictional, it strongly suggests the presence of a loving God intervening in human events. Finally, it is also a love story about the strong relationship shared by Cora and Cisco.
My only minor criticisms are that I found the book a little too long for the story it had to tell, and, on occasion, the author went too much into the weeds of historical research techniques. But aside from these minor issues, I found the book a very enjoyable read.