A Treasury of Miracles for Women

March 18, 2002
This book is indeed for women, if by women
one means white, American, middle-class, conservative Christian mothers. But there's little reason to quibble; such women are exactly Kingsbury's target audience, and few of them will be disappointed by these stories of angels, medical miracles and mothers who really, really love their kids (the only exception being a "childless by choice" woman who really, really loves her house). While Kingsbury claims that these stories are true (there's no documentation or opportunity to corroborate this), she has clearly taken liberties with the dialogue; the conversations between doctors and anguished parents are straight out of 1960s-era medical dramas. The majority of the stories fit a pretty old chestnut of a formula: tragedy happens, the doctor says there's no hope, God intervenes (often in the form of an angel), the patient miraculously gets better, then the doctor shakes his head in disbelief, says that the recovery is inexplicable and admits that he was wrong. In more than one case, the wrong medical advice is, not surprisingly, to abort a gravely ill fetus. Two later chapters are a bit more compelling in that the sick person indeed dies, and the miracle is the good that comes from that death. There's little doubt that Kingsbury's subjects had astonishing experiences, but the nuance, texture and reality of those experiences are lost in the simplistic telling. Luis Palau's It's a God Thing
packs the emotional punch Kingsbury is going for, but with considerably less treacle.