Customer Reviews
Miracle at St. Anna 
2008-02-05
I was reading through a weekly entertainment magazine when I cam across a blurb aboout Spike Lee prepairing to direct the movie "Miracle at St. Anna", about WWII Buffalo Soldiers by James McBride. I became interest and looked up Mr. McBride. Found out about his other book, the Color of Water....so, I decided to order them both. I am not a licensed book reviewer, I just love to read and this story is one of the best I've ever read. McBride is a fantastic story teller - once I opened the book, I found it hard to put it down. I could feel myself there with these soldiers on that mountain in Italy scared, confused, woundering why am I here fighting for someone else's freedom when I am not free my self? I can't trust the folks who lead me because they either hate me for what/who I am, secretly jealous because I have the command of this foreign language and I should be leading, have the ability to adapt to various situations that command me to be strong and survive, or they are just plain bigots. If this isn't enough, I am held down in a village waiting for help because a big hearted brother has decided to save this little fellow's life. Solidarity! Like it or not I am here and on the other side is the military enemy who hates and destroys everything insite. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. This book had me feeling for those men, wanting to know how and if they make it; and if they do, what the future holds for them. A great read...tell me what you think. Oh,loved the Color or Water too!
Miracle at St. Anna 
2008-01-19
Excellent capturing of the Negro experience in
World War II Italy. Contrasts U.S. attitudes with Italian attitudes.
Miracle at St. Anna 2006-11-09
This is a powerful fiction based on experiences of the African American soldiers in Italy near the end of WW2. Written by the author of "The Color of Water", James McBride, it's a story of racism, kindness, war, longing, and redemption. I've read it twice, something I don't often do. Plot, characters, and even language move and dance in this great story. READ IT!
A touch of divinity in war torn Italy 2005-12-25
James McBride's "Miracle at St. Anna" is a tenderly written, marvelously manufactured and historically and socially relevant story about an incredible incident is a small Tuscany village during World War 2.
The story commences with a brief description of an inexplicable present day murder committed by a Puerto Rican postal worker Hector Negron against one of his customers. We then flashback to Italy in December 1944 in the waning days of the war. A group of 4 American soldiers, members of the fabled Buffalo Soldiers of the 15,000 all black 92nd Division find themselves lost miles away from their lines in the Tuscan mountain valley village of St. Anna di Stazzema. The multilingual Negron is a member of that group including Train, a simple giant of a man, Bishop, a shifty hustler and the cerebral Lt. Stamps.
Train, confused after an aborted skirmish in which he was wounded ambled off into the village and the other men went to find him. Train discovered a dazed and confused young boy injured very badly due to a building collapse and became his guardian, believing the boy was imbued with sacred mystical powers. The men were welcomed by the local villagers who shared their meager provisions with their dark skinned saviors. Little by little we examine the characters both American and Italians through McBride's insightful prose.
The men are cut off from their command but after receiving radio contact are ordered to stay put and if possible capture a German prisoner. A group of Italian partisans known to the villagers enters the town lead by a man called Peppi and his lieutenant Rodolfo, with a German deserter. We learn from the young boy, who gradually recovers from his injuries and begins to talk that the Germans had massacred more than 560 innocent villagers in the church of St. Anna, in reprisal for partisan activity. This fact is corroborated by the partisans. Peppi believes that the slaughter was precipated by a betrayal and endeavors to use the American soldiers to uncover the traitor.
Meanwhile the ragged German troops are mobilizing a huge force to forge a last ditch offensive within this Italian valley region. As the battle reaches the village a startling series of events occurs which makes us believe that there was divine intervention. The reasons for Negron's slaying of the customer become crystal clear.
McBride's novel is an important piece of literature because it accurately describes the prevalent social mores of the time. The black soldiers, while allowed to die for their country, are discriminated against by their superiors. They are for the most part lead by white commanding officers, many of whom are Southern racists. Any black officers are that in just name only and are prevented from making command decisions. McBride successfully integrates his social commentary, with history and spirituality to create a deeply moving tale.
The Black Butterfly & Miracles. 
2005-12-21
There is much action in this book, but the Black Butterfly and his episode during WWII is worth telling. Peppi Grotta used that nickname during the war in Tuscany for the butterfly at the olive groves in the area where his family lived. He is a bold fighter who believes in revenge. After a "spy" (like Mary Saratt in 1863) was tortured to death and hanged by the Germans, the Black Butterfly (an avenger) "spreads his wings for the very first time." Six weeks later, he got his revenge on the SS Commander, doing the same to him which he'd done to the woman, and displaying the abused corpse in the same piazza for just enough time between the two sunsets in one day once a year (only minutes) for the locales to know what had occurred. He became legend as "a man who never forgets his friends, who punishes his enemies...." It was rumored that he went to America after the war and owned a jazz nightclub in Harlem filled with black butterflies.
"The Little Battle of the Bulge" took place on Christmas Day, 1944, at St. Anna di Stazzema, where 560 Italians died in a massacre. Rodolfo Berelli had killed Peppi, making it appear as a suicide. The money paid to him for arranging the murder of the Black Butterfly got him to America by boat as one of the many immigrants after the war. He took the name Randy Mitchell as he settled in Kingston, New York, working as a mechanic.
Almost forty years later, right before Christmas, 1983, his fate took him into the post office at 34th Street in Manhatten for a twenty-cent stamp. The elderly postal clerk named Hector. who'd suffered physically and emotionally in the St. Anna incident, recognized the enemy and shot that hated face off -- right there in the post office. At his apartment, a missing statue's head of the Primavera from the Santa Trinita Bridge in Rome is found.
The Black Butterfly had exacted his revenge, even from death, as he had promised. Hector was rescued by a wealthy Italian whose money and power had him relocated to the Scychelles Island off the coast of South Africa to live out his life in peace. His rescuer had been there at St. Anna where Hector's ordeal and survival was the first miracle. "Safety leaves no room for miracles and miracles, he had learned, were the only sure thing in life." After several days of repressing his war memories, he and his guard told each other their remembrances of Tuscany. "They both realized they had finally found what each was looking for. They had found yet another miracle, and they were finally free of the last one."
Inspired by real events and real people, this book reveals a little known, but historical, incident as overheard from his Uncle Henry's tales of what he had experienced long ago and far away. To write it as fiction, he let his imagination soar like the butterfly, making a strange but believeable war story to beat all. He gives a different twist to WWII and the kamikazees but, mainly, he believes in miracles. We all need a miracle or two, no matter how mundane our daily lives may be. James McBride previously wrote a memoir, THE COLOR OF WATER, as a tribute to his mother.
Triumph of the Spirit 2005-01-06
James McBride's memoir,
The Color of Water, was a literary achievement that topped bestseller lists for more than two years. Now McBride turns his extraordinary gift for storytelling to fiction.
Miracle at St. Anna is a tale of courage and redemption inspired by the famed Buffalo soldiers of the 92nd Division and a little-known historic event in a small Tuscan village at the end of World War II-the massacre at St. Anna di Stazzema.
A wonderful story of a forgotten piece of WW2 history 2004-12-16
I had read "The Color of Water" several years ago, and I was curious to see how James McBride would handle fiction. I was not disappointed. McBride brings to life his four soldiers from the Buffalo division, men who were pawns in a white man's war, who tasted freedom of a sort they would not know when they would get back to America--if they would make it alive. The relationship between Train and the little boy was just magical, and the various subplots all made perfect sense. I can't wait for my children (now 9 and 11) to be old enough to read this book!
What a treasure 2004-09-15
I am so glad that I stumbled on this book. It was lyrically written and completely engages the reader in the lives of all these people. Mostly the 4 Buffalo soldiers, but the Italians as well. I cannot wait to read everything else that this author has written.
BUFFALO SOLDIERS OF THE 92ND DIVISION... 2004-08-14
The author, who penned the classic international bestseller, "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother", and was the recipient of the prestigious Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, now turns to a story inspired by an incident that took place during World War II in the war torn, Italian village of St. Anna di Stazzema in the region of Tuscany. This is a war yarn with a twist, as it features a certain segment of our nation's army at the time, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Division.
The Buffalo soldiers were men of color in the segregated army of yesteryear. On top of fighting enemy soldiers, they were also subjected not only to racist stereotyping but to poor battle decisions by their white commanding officers, which decisions reflected just how dispensable the army thought these Buffalo soldiers to be. This is a story primarily viewed through the eyes of these very soldiers.
In the town of St. Anna di Stazzema, something very bad happened, something that would affect all those who would encounter those connected to the town and its events. It would affect Germans, Americans, Italians, partisans, and collaborators in different ways. Its impact would carry through the years and last until the present day.
This is a story about those Buffalo soldiers, the village in Tuscany nestled in a war zone, the enemy soldiers, villagers, collaborators, and partisans whom they encounter. At the heart of all that transpires is a little Italian boy, traumatized by war, whose fate would touch all with whom he came in contact and who would be at the heart of the miracle that was to take place. It is through him that they all learn that miracles do, indeed, exist.
The book gets off to a great start. In present day New York, an older postal worker, for seemingly no reason, blows away a customer at point blank range with the single pull of a trigger. An investigative reporter runs with a lead and finds that the postal worker has, hidden in his home, a famous piece of statuary, an exquisitely sculpted head, which has been missing from a bridge in Italy since World War II. The mystery deepens.
The book then reverts to World War II and the cast of characters that are central to the story. It is here that the author runs into some difficulties. When a number of Buffalo soldiers get caught behind enemy lines, the story start to fall apart. Though it is an interesting story, it is simply dully told. Excruciatingly pedestrian in its telling, the book takes its toll on the reader, turning what could have been a vivid, riveting account into a soporific one.
It is not until towards the end of the book that the story again picks up and is able to deliver the same one two punch that it does in the beginning. By then, however, it is too late, and the book never reaches the promise so incipient in its beginning pages. Still, for those readers willing to put up with some disappointment, the book ultimately delivers at the end.
Outstanding 2004-01-17
I picked up this book in one of the bookstores in Honolulu airport not knowing what to expect. It quickly turned out to be one of the best novels I have ever read. The story revolves around a group of American Buffalo Soldiers fighting in Italy during the Second World War. Though the story begins with an incident in the present time, the reader is eventually taken to the past in order to discover the circumstances that led to that "incident".
Emphasis is not only given to the discrimination within the armed forces but also to the development of the characters of the soldiers. The book is so well written that you feel that you are part of that group forming your own alliances and friendships. The struggle that unfolds is not only the fight for individual survival but also the struggle to understand oneself.
A beautiful bond that develops is the bond between a young Italian child and one of the soldiers. No heroics or blown out of proportion myths here. Just a beautiful bond between humans that run into each other in the worst possible condition, the midst of a battle.
Though the miracle takes place at the end, I also feel that it was unfolding throughout the book.
A beautiful book.
