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The Miracle Boy

Living with miracles is not as easy as people think. A boy walks on water, but that’s perhaps the simplest miracle of all in this collection of engaging short stories full of both everyday and far out miracles. Some real, some hopeful. Love and travel, as well as wit and humor spice these tales of wishful wonder.

“Irelan’s humanity, acute sense of humor, and mastery of timing should give this collection broad appeal among readers of short fiction.” —Booklist (ALA)

“This plainspoken and quirky collection is imbued with a wit as comfortable as an evening with Garrison Keillor.”–Foreword Reviews

“You know when you were a kid and your dad drove too fast over the crest of a hill and it felt like the car was leaving the ground, you’d get a tickle in the back of your throat and a tingle between your legs? That’s what Patrick Irelan’s stories do to your mind. Miracle Boy is a great ride.” –J. Harley McIlrath, author, Possum Trot

“Irelan is a fascinating storyteller who sets his tales in small and tiny ideas but with large themes: A kid walks on water, and an entrepreneur makes his fortune selling adulterated Dr Pepper to tourists in Branson. These stories join the absurd with reality, which is remarkably close to Vonnegut territory. So it goes.”–Jim Harris, founder of Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City, Iowa

“In Patrick Irelan’s new short story collection, The Miracle Boy, it doesn’t take long for the magical to seem ordinary, and pretty soon the ordinary becomes magical. It’s a collection of humor and wonder that will make you take a fresh look at the world around you.”–Jim O’Loughlin, Professor in the Department of Languages & Literature at the University of Northern Iowa

“What if we had the ability to make our dreams come true? In the tradition of Jonathan Swift, these stories challenge both our hopes and dreams.”—Richard Burgin, Editor, Boulevard Magazine

“Irreverent and imaginative, these are very funny stories. They satirize the current state of affairs in our beloved nation, and like all good satire they include a tone of lament: they weep for an America that (perhaps) once was, and for the America it might—with better luck—have become. Read ’em and laugh.”—Dan Lechay, author of The Quarry, Ohio University Press Poetry Series

Patrick Irelan is the author of two memoir collections, Central Standard (Univ of Iowa, 2002) and A Firefly In The Night both set in the heart of the Midwest. He is also the author of a previous collection of short stories entitled Reruns.