For the second time in her marriage, Mariah White catches her husband with another woman, and Faith, their seven-year-old daughter, witnesses every painful minute. In the aftermath of a sudden divorce, Mariah struggles with depression and Faith begins to confide in an imaginary friend. At first, Mariah dismisses these exchanges as a child's imagination. But when Faith starts reciting passages from the Bible, develops stigmata, and begins to perform miraculous healings, Mariah wonders if her daughter - a girl with no religious background - might indeed be seeing God. As word spreads and controversy heightens, Mariah and Faith are besieged by believers and disbelievers alike, caught in a media circus that threatens what little stability they have left. What are you willing to believe? Is Faith a prophet or a troubled little girl? Is Mariah a good mother facing an impossible crisis - or a charlatan using her daughter to reclaim the attention her unfaithful husband withheld?
This novel has what might seem to be a maddeningly ambiguous ending, but it can be taken so many different ways by many types of readers. It was one of her most riveting and it can be read from many different angles, whether you're religious or atheist. A book that I feel gets overshadowed by her more recent novels.
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8 April, 2011:
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