The Hermitage House Miracle

It's no secret that getting young males to read is almost the stuff of miracles; young adult (YA) titles like "The Hunger Games" and the "Twilight" books mostly appeal to girls. Ater's latest book has everything that will appeal to boys: Fishing, a mysterious dog named Scout, and especially video games.

It's late May 1992 and twelve-year-old Jamie Wilson's life is a mess. For years he and his mother have lived in run-down apartments, moving often, with his mother taking minimum wage jobs and basically neglecting a boy whose teachers have said should be tested for his IQ because he's brilliant. Just before his mother leaves for a job at the Lizard Lounge in North Carolina, she tells him cryptically: "I've given you the last six years of my life, and for what? To always be running from one town to another? Never having a life of my own just so you could live?" And then in a drunken slur she had added, "If I had a lick of sense I'd have let old Ernie do what he wanted."

Watching his mother down another beer and race out of the door, he wonders what she's means by SIX YEARS, who is the mysterious Ernie and why is she so mean to him. As he lies on the ratty sofa that's his bed in their latest apartment, he glances at a newspaper dated May 24, 1992, a few days earlier. The article said that a new wave of computer games was on the horizon -- computer games that would soon replace the old pinball machines and "boggle the mind" with realistic video techniques that could only be dreamed about a few years earlier. The article had aroused a curious excitement in him, and he didn't know why.

Jamie doesn't know until two days later that his mom had hit a deer on the way to her barmaid job, causing the old Ford she was driving to crash into a tree, killing her instantly. He didn't know because he was used to her neglectful behavior.

After a fruitless search for next of kin, child protective services brings Jamie to the run-down Hermitage House, where he joins a handful of girls and boys who are treated with care by Mother Catherine and her quirky "sisters." It's a nondenominational institution that changes Jamie when he meets Antonio, the 11-year-old only survivor of a horrific house fire that killed his parents and his sister.

That's when Jamie's dreams start. He bonds with Antonio and is devastated when his friend is adopted and moves to Loudon County, Virginia. Jamie discovers a video arcade in town and immerses himself in a machine called The Returner. His dreams are about a little blond-haired boy with a mother and father and a sister. The dreams seem to be real when he plays The Returner. I don't want to spoil this review by revealing too much, but I have no doubt that this book will get young boys to read. And that's a good thing. Reviewer: David Kinchen, Huntington News

The Hermitage House Miracle is an appealing mystery, aimed at middle-grade readers, but enticing to adults as well. A young boy, twelve years old, loses the woman he knows as “mother” in a one-vehicle driving-intoxicated accident, shortly after she flings accusations at him while simultaneously promising she loves him. Jamie cannot understand why she claims to have spent “six years” of his life dealing with him, when he knows he is twelve. Since there seems to be no other next of kin, and no records earlier than Jamie’s first day of first grade, social workers bring him to the Hermitage House for Children, once a bustling, thriving, orphanage, now nearly condemned and soon to close if a miracle of funding and renovation doesn’t take place.

A heartwarming and touching novel, The Hermitage House Miracle explores issues that in other hands could inspire despair, fear, and resignation. Here, though, a thread of hope runs consistently, inspired by empathetic characters, most of whom spend their lives trying diligently to do what is right as they perceive it. Readers will be immediately caught up with Jamie, who has had such an incredible life, yet who is a good and decent individual despite all. Reviewed by Mallory Forbes, Mallory Heart Reviews