Paricutin

A Mexican boy and a Nebraska girl—bizarrely linked by a volcano, an earthquake, and an odd poem—careen inexorably toward an improbable rendezvous in Jerome Dobson’s debut novel, Paricutin: The Miracle of Daniel Pulido—a story of survival, courage, belief, hope, and love.
 
The story of Paricutin begins when sixteen-year-old Daniel Pulido has a premonition of the
1985 Mexico City earthquake. He warns his mother who is working at a children’s hospital—but she doesn’t believe him. Eight days later, Daniel is the sole survivor found in the rubble because a special microphone, lowered into the wreckage, picked up some of his mysterious ramblings. The Church attributes Daniel’s miraculous survival to God and broadcasts that Daniel’s “ramblings” were divinely inspired.
 
However, three people—Beth, a Nebraska cattle rancher; her daughter, Faith, a geophysicist studying at Stanford; and Tim Brown, a California defense contractor—faintly recognize Daniel’s “ramblings” and realize they somehow have an improbable connection with him. Tim and Faith immediately begin to search for Daniel. Finding him becomes the absolute focus of their lives.
 
Blaming God, Himself, for his mother’s death and bitterly angry at the Church for exploiting his miraculous survival, Daniel contrives to escape from his hospital prison. His passion is to discover a scientific way to anticipate a coming earthquake—he wants to give people a chance to survive when God says they must be destroyed. Daniel’s odyssey includes a violent run-in with an LA gang, his arrest for murder, two more earthquakes, and the final realization that he can’t fight his fight alone. When Faith, Tim, and Beth find him he learns there can be something else in his life beyond hatred and the need for revenge. How the four find each other, provide strength and support to each other, and then take on the world together is at the very heart of the inspirational story of Paricutin: The Miracle of Daniel Pulido.