The question, “Will Anna be saved?” by either Divine or earthly intervention, silently and meticulously engages the reader from the very outset. Such constructs the foundational plot -sufficient in itself however, entwined within, tendrils of loss, abuse, suspicion, suspense and mystery slowly emerge as secrets unfold. Lib Wright -with her experience of nursing alongside Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war, and sister Michael -a Catholic nun, embark on a complex quest to ascertain the truth within the confines of Anna's chamber, they alone must determine whether her purported phenomenal ability to remain alive for four months without food is indeed a miracle or a dastardly hoax. It is an all-encompassing, cinematographic contemplation of an innocent eleven-year-old girl’s consummate trust in the impetus of fasting and prayer her profound, obsessive and selfless tenacity to redeem her dead brother’s soul from purgatory infiltrates every grain of this compelling, harrowing narrative. Set in a small Irish hamlet in the mid 19th century some seven years after the 1845-1852 potato famine, ‘The Wonder’ depicts an era of poverty, superstition, Catholic doctrine and conviction, and, not least, that unfathomable chasm dividing believers and sceptics.
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