River Angel: A Novel

In April, 1991, in a little Wisconsin town about 100 miles southwest of the town where I grew up, a misfit boy was kidnapped by a group of high school kids who, later would testify they only meant to frighten him, to drive him around for a while. Somehow they ended up in the river whooping and hollering on a two lane bridge. Somehow, the boy was shoved, he jumped, he slipped -- accounts vary -- into the icy water. The kids told police they never heard a splash; one reported seeing a brilliant flash of light. (Several people in the area witnessed a similar light, while others recalled hearing something "kind of like thunder.") All night, volunteers walked the rivers edge, but it was dawn before the body was found in a barn a good mile from the bridge.

The owner of the barn had been the one to discover the body and she said the boys' cheeks were rosy, his skin warm to the touch. A sweet smell hung in the air. "It was," she said, "as if he were just sleeping" And then she told police she believed an angel had carried him there.

A miracle? A hoax? Or something in between? With acute insight and great compassion, A. Manette Ansay captures the inner life of a town and its residents struggling to forge a new identity in the face of a rapidly changing world. The result is a novel of transcendental beauty, an extraordinary portrait of the human soul's longing for grace.