Miracle Worker
James McBride reads from his exceptional debut novel this week
African American author James McBride has every reason to believe in miracles. His first book, a memoir called The Color of Water (1996), was a publishing sensation that met with widespread critical acclaim and spent two years on The New York Times bestseller list. Probing racial boundaries both personal and universal, McBride examined the significance of ethnicity in American culture through the lens of his Polish mother’s marriage to a black man. The book is now considered a nonfiction classic.
McBride’s latest effort, an accomplished first novel titled Miracle at St. Anna (Riverhead Books, $24.95, 288 pages), mixes fiction and fact, folklore and history as it explores the implications of race on an international scale. Using a more expansive canvas—Europe during World War II—McBride’s scope here is broad and ambitious. Based on a true incident that occurred in 1944, the book follows four American soldiers from the segregated 92nd Buffalo Division who get trapped behind enemy lines in the Tuscan village of St. Anna of Stazzema.
Capturing the ensuing clash of nationalities, as well as the mystique of Italy—a place where the past is always present, and myth carries more weight than reality—McBride writes with authority of the effects of race in a time of global upheaval. At the center of his story is goodhearted, slow-witted Sam Train, a benign giant nicknamed “Diesel” by his comrades. Transplanted from High Point, N.C., to the hills of rural Italy, Train travels with his outfit to fight Hitler, “the biggest white man of them all.” His distrust of the Northern blacks who serve beside him as well as of the whites in command compounds his sense of bewilderment at the war-torn world. In a net bag slung at his hip, he carries the head of a stone statue retrieved from a bombed-out bridge, a token of Italy that becomes a talisman, a charm Train thinks has the power to make him disappear. War or no war, he comes to believe that invisibility equals invulnerability, that the best color to be is no color at all: “This...is what it must feel like to be white,” he thinks, as he magically dodges bullets in the heat of battle.
When Train rescues an Italian orphan boy who has survived the Nazi slaughter in St. Anna, he and his comrades become involved in a political plot that has tragic repercussions. But out of crisis come small miracles that redeem the soldiers, the local villagers and a group of Italian partisans, uniting them all. In fictionalizing this slice of history, McBride underscores the indignities of war while illuminating the rewards of cultural exchange and the possibility for hope in a world rent by conflict. He has written a life-affirming book—just what readers need right now. Also an award-winning composer—he’s penned tunes for Anita Baker and Grover Washington Jr.—McBride reads from his new novel 6:30 p.m. Feb. 26 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers.
Bubbling under
The unassuming community of Murfreesboro—long a hotbed of under-the-radar musical talent—is now home to an alternative publication called A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press. The editor of the publication, a woman known simply as Jerianne, is a Tennessee transplant who, along with a staff of national volunteers, produces the grass-roots guide four times a year. Offering info on underground publishers and projects in the United States and abroad, A Reader’s Guide ($4, 86 pp.) also includes articles on newsworthy events and reviews of like-minded periodicals, from politically inflected journals to comic books to magazines devoted to music, literature and film. A host of original substitutes for mass-marketed materials is listed in the guide, along with details on how to procure them.
Production-wise, A Reader’s Guide itself is an unpretentious, rough-and-tumble publication with an earnestness that’s endearing. The bottom line here—and in every magazine that gets a mention—is freedom of speech. So if you’re a left-winger or a Wobbly, a red or a rad, if you’re seeking an alternative to the alternative, or you’re just plain curious, A Reader’s Guide offers a number of novel intellectual outlets. Of course, you won’t find the guide at your local chain bookstore—that’s why they call it the underground press. Try the small independent book retailer Halcyon Books, which specializes in such titles, located at the corner of 12th Avenue South and Halcyon. Or write to: A Reader’s Guide to the Underground Press, P.O. Box 330156, Murfreesboro TN 37133. On the net: www.undergroundpress.org.
—Julie Hale
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