Excerpt from The Miracle Girl by Andrew Roe, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Why is it always white folks with this kind of stuff? White folks and Latins. Why is it you never hear about black folks seeing Jesus in their shower curtains?"

Good point, Marcus concedes, making a surgeon-like incision in his second pork chop, which invariably never tastes as good as the first. Good, satisfying. But not as good, as satisfying. You lose that first bloom of flavor, the way it takes over your mouth, trickles underneath your tongue. The first pleasures are the purest.

"I don't know, Marcus. I know it's strange. I know in some ways it probably isn't right. But maybe we should pay us a visit. You know, to be neighborly, sure, but to check it out, see what all the fussing is. I don't think we even officially met the woman all these years. Or the husband. And maybe she, the little girl, could help. Could help us with our… problem. We could just visit and see."

Marcus stops in mid-chew. On the TV there's a man jumping up and down, not getting much air, mostly knee flexes actually. The superiorly dressed host is maneuvering to shake his hand and offer hostly congratulations but the man remains too transfixed by the exaltation of his win. A crazed white man from Florida who's something called a crisis management consultant and just won ten grand for a half hour's work. Marcus loves his game shows, but he has to admit: every time he sees someone win big like this, especially white people from Florida, a little part of him dies too. He'd like to be a contestant himself one day—who wouldn't. He'd like to be hopeful and on TV and electric with suddenly realized potential, like you were maybe a different person—greater, vaster—from what you'd thought all these years.

"Now why would we want to go and do a damn fool thing like that?"   

Excerpted from The Miracle Girl by Andrew Roe. Copyright © 2015 by Andrew Roe. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.