Stefanie Wiens (by Bruce Monk)
The Unseen Statue
by Edgar Governo
Miracles are always just around the corner. They happened to someone we used to know, they're sure to save us from this mess, they're going to change the world according to the prophecies in our holy text of choice. Somehow, though, the reality always turns out to be something other than we expected.
Families and cities, like individuals, can end up clinging to this idea of the miracle—something that surely happened in the past or will happen in the future, without ever happening right now. The Polish-American Nowak family in Miracle on South Division Street rests their whole sense of identity on their Catholic faith in general and on the tale of a past family miracle in particular, only to have both fall apart when confronted with reality. All around them, the city of Buffalo is also slowly deteriorating, losing whatever sense of miraculous promise originally brought immigrants like the Nowaks there in the first place.
