Miracle at St. Anna. (fiction reviews).

Miracle at St. Anna by James McBride Riverhead Books February 2002, $24.95 ISBN 1-573-22212-7

James McBride, the journalist and musician who authored the best-selling 1996 memoir The Color of Water, has written a compelling first novel about love, loyalty, betrayal and race in World War II.

Miracle at St. Anna focuses on four soldiers of the mostly African-American 92nd Division, who are lost in rural Italy, a region of eerie calm, in between a recent atrocity at the hands of desperate Nazi soldiers and the coming battle between the Germans and the Allies. The soldiers, fighting for freedom as part of an army that discriminates against them, make up a study in contrasts: there is the smooth-talking preacher/con artist Bishop; the simple, gentle giant Train; the Puerto Rican Hector; and the group's leader, the educated Lieutenant Stamps. When the four come upon a small village, their interactions with the residents highlight the differences and the similarities between the African Americans and the Italians, who have never seen black people before.

While Hector translates for the two groups, Bishop applies his charm to the women of the village, and Train forms a bond with a homeless Italian boy--carrying around a statue's head he believes makes him invisible. In the midst of all this, Stamps tries to maintain order in a time and place with ever-fewer, ever-changing rules.

The novel's prologue, set in 1983, deftly establishes several mysteries: Why has the aged Hector, now a postal employee living in Harlem, just shot a customer to death? Just who was this customer? And why, in examining Hector's home and belongings, do the authorities discover the head of a statue? As he slowly reveals the answers, McBride weaves his third-person narrative seamlessly among the soldiers and Italian peasants, many of whom emerge as well-rounded characters--no mean feat for a novel that tomes in at under 300 pages.

The book contains many lovely passages, such as this description of Train's momentary transformation, as he gazes at a bust of St. Anna adorning a church: "All of the millions of pieces of knowledge and the truths he'd known, and some he could never know, flowed behind his eyeballs: the secrets of plants, why rivers flow north to south, the arithmetic of dams, why dinosaurs walked the earth. He saw cities under water, seas that parted, where wizards live. He understood why steel ships float, the magic of pyramids, the shaping of the mountains, each and every one of God's miracles."

The dialogue is authentic and sometimes very funny ("I think your cheese slid off your biscuit," Stamps tells Train.) Most impressively, McBride paints a credible portrait of life in a war-torn Italian village, complete with all the superstitions, passions, jealousies, warmth and wisdom of the people who live there. And with his disparate group of African-American characters, McBride suggests that the black community was as diverse in times past as it is today.

Miracle at St. Anna is a moving, sad, ultimately joyful novel that delivers on the promise of The Color of Water and heralds fine works to come from the talented McBride.

--Clifford Thompson, a writer of essays and fiction, is the editor of Current Biography