[In Miracle Play] Susan Richards Shreve gives us a family in love with its own mythology. The Howells are rememberers. They are chroniclers. They have fitted out their Bible with extra pages between Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus, and it is here they keep their own parables and miracles … They are a family who live from event to event as consciously as actors go from scene to scene, and Shreve stages their story as deftly as if a curtain had dropped between chapters.

Both the settings and the characters of this book will be familiar to those who have read Shreve's other work. Her territory is roughly the region we know as "Middle Atlantic," stretching from Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., with occasional trips north to New York or south to Virginia. Her people live on the edge of fame…. Most often, the action begins in days gone...