“Darkly beautiful, Girls examines how forgiveness and wisdom take hold in the most unexpected places.” —People
“A mesmerizing first novel.” —Huffington Post
Winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY), Gold Medal in Religious Fiction
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 Amsterdam Book Festival
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 Paris Book Festival
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival
Finalist for a 2015 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction
Finalist for an IndieFAB Book of the Year in LGBT and Religious Book Categories
"In upstate New York, young girls go missing, nuns are revolting, Nixon is resigning, and young Cee-Cee Bianco has visions of the Virgin Mary in this polished debut novel...Caschetta’s first novel is filled with a kind of dark poetry and the menace of ordinary evils."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Compulsively readable." —Lambda Literary Review
"A stunning debut novel about an unforgettable dysfunctional family and faith." —Largehearted Boy
“This debut sparkles; Miracle Girls is that rarest thing: a literary miracle. MB Caschetta will break your heart and mend it all at once.”
—Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and Half a Life
“It’s not every day the Virgin Mary makes an appearance in a novel. And how fitting that MB Caschetta invites her into a story where a grandmother provides safety and thousands of prayers; where law-breaking nuns save desperate girls; where life hurts and is full of grace; a world where miracles happen. MB doesn’t flinch from writing painful truths nor does she flinch from lifting her characters up and us along with them. Miracle Girls is a wonderful book I will give to friends.”
—Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars With Boys, Looking for Mary, and Astonished
“What MB Caschetta’s novel brilliantly proposes is an underground railroad for girls. It feels like one of those girls grew up and wrote Miracle Girls. I loved reading it and rooting for CeeCee as she struggles to survive her own family and her saintly little girl voyage with the aid of intergenerational healing, and the vintage magic of radical nuns and priests from a time when they worked for peace and helped the lost girls of the world find home.”
—Eileen Myles, author of Inferno: A Poet's Novel and Snowflake
“A wondrous and exhilarating novel. The Bianco family is unforgettable in all its catastrophic dysfunction but also in the capacity of some of its most broken members to fight their way toward salvation. Miracle Girls is an unflinching, fantastical and unexpectedly healing act of the imagination. You won't have read anything quite like it, and you're not likely soon to forget it either.”
—Paul Russell, author of Immaculate Blue and The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov
“Has ten year old Cee Cee Bianco just worked a miracle? Are her visions divine or or only the half-baked imaginings of a silly girl? Cee-Cee’s mother has abandoned the family; her brother lies in a coma. Alone, she must pick her way through a wasteland of adult foolishness, but the intuitive wisdom that guides her seems an earthly miracle. Caschetta’s vivid, thoughtful novel leaps, skips and soars along the boundary between faith and superstition, turning every expectation on its head.”
—Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of The Harbormaster’s Daughter
“Miracle Girls is a wondrous book in which gritty reality alternates with ecstatic visions, cruelty is leavened by grace, and the treachery of families and is redeemed by the kindness of strangers. MB Cashetta conjures an era, a place and her characters unforgettably. An accomplished and exceptional debut novel.”
—Ralph Sassone, author of The Intimates
“Darkly beautiful, Girls examines how forgiveness and wisdom take hold in the most unexpected places.” —People
“A mesmerizing first novel.” —Huffington Post
Winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY), Gold Medal in Religious Fiction
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 Amsterdam Book Festival
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 Paris Book Festival
Winner of the Spiritual Book Category for the 2015 San Francisco Book Festival
Finalist for a 2015 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction
Finalist for an IndieFAB Book of the Year in LGBT and Religious Book Categories
"In upstate New York, young girls go missing, nuns are revolting, Nixon is resigning, and young Cee-Cee Bianco has visions of the Virgin Mary in this polished debut novel...Caschetta’s first novel is filled with a kind of dark poetry and the menace of ordinary evils."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Compulsively readable." —Lambda Literary Review
"A stunning debut novel about an unforgettable dysfunctional family and faith." —Largehearted Boy
“This debut sparkles; Miracle Girls is that rarest thing: a literary miracle. MB Caschetta will break your heart and mend it all at once.”
—Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and Half a Life
“It’s not every day the Virgin Mary makes an appearance in a novel. And how fitting that MB Caschetta invites her into a story where a grandmother provides safety and thousands of prayers; where law-breaking nuns save desperate girls; where life hurts and is full of grace; a world where miracles happen. MB doesn’t flinch from writing painful truths nor does she flinch from lifting her characters up and us along with them. Miracle Girls is a wonderful book I will give to friends.”
—Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars With Boys, Looking for Mary, and Astonished
“What MB Caschetta’s novel brilliantly proposes is an underground railroad for girls. It feels like one of those girls grew up and wrote Miracle Girls. I loved reading it and rooting for CeeCee as she struggles to survive her own family and her saintly little girl voyage with the aid of intergenerational healing, and the vintage magic of radical nuns and priests from a time when they worked for peace and helped the lost girls of the world find home.”
—Eileen Myles, author of Inferno: A Poet's Novel and Snowflake
“A wondrous and exhilarating novel. The Bianco family is unforgettable in all its catastrophic dysfunction but also in the capacity of some of its most broken members to fight their way toward salvation. Miracle Girls is an unflinching, fantastical and unexpectedly healing act of the imagination. You won't have read anything quite like it, and you're not likely soon to forget it either.”
—Paul Russell, author of Immaculate Blue and The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov
“Has ten year old Cee Cee Bianco just worked a miracle? Are her visions divine or or only the half-baked imaginings of a silly girl? Cee-Cee’s mother has abandoned the family; her brother lies in a coma. Alone, she must pick her way through a wasteland of adult foolishness, but the intuitive wisdom that guides her seems an earthly miracle. Caschetta’s vivid, thoughtful novel leaps, skips and soars along the boundary between faith and superstition, turning every expectation on its head.”
—Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of The Harbormaster’s Daughter
“Miracle Girls is a wondrous book in which gritty reality alternates with ecstatic visions, cruelty is leavened by grace, and the treachery of families and is redeemed by the kindness of strangers. MB Cashetta conjures an era, a place and her characters unforgettably. An accomplished and exceptional debut novel.”
—Ralph Sassone, author of The Intimates
