Finding Miracles Mass Market Paperback – May 9, 2006

This is a wonderful book! A sometimes haunting, sometimes lovely, but overall heartwarming story about family, adoption, history, love, loss, and finding out who you really are is written in a way that continuously drew me in and kept me interested about what would happen next. All the characters are wonderfully developed along the way and I felt like even though the story took place in a small town in Vermont and an unnamed Latin American country-I knew someone just like them in my own neighborhood.

I enjoyed it enough to finish this story. The beginning is intriguing and makes you read more. There was some elements missing that you find other books by Julia Alvarez that are missing here. However, it was worth the read.

This book was so well written. It transports you to feel each character thoughts and experiences. Definite gem. Highly recommend

Julia Alvarez is a fantastic writer! this novel is a great read for teens and parents, there are so many feelings explained a way you can be in the different characters shoes. Friendship, parenting concerns, adoption and adventure.

I tend to really like books written by Julia Alvarez However, this one was a little flat for my liking. I was not impressed with the way she switched scenes without warning in a few places. It made for a bit of confusion and I had to go back and make sure i wasn't skipping over any sentences. I would recommend to my pre teen nieces but not great for an adult. If that makes sense.

I loved the novel. The only issue I had was that it was too short and it left me wanting more!

Great very nice very very good im satisfied but dont want to write anithing else sorry god less you all

Julie Alvarez's ("How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent") newest novel "Finding Miracles" is the story of Milly Milagros Kaufman, a typical all-American, half-Jewish high schooler with a not-so-typical secret: Milly was adopted as an infant from a war-torn Latin American country, where her adopted parents were serving in the Peace Corps. Milly has managed to successfully keep this info from her best friend Em, friends Jake and Dylan, and the community at large, because thinking about her sickly beginnings at an orphanage dredged up too many painful questions about why she was abandoned at the doorstep, who her birth parents may have been and if they "disappeared" during the dictatorship.Milly is forced to confront her past when Pablo Bolívar joins her grade at high school. Pablo and his parents are refugees from Milly's home country (which is never named). One of his uncles was murdered, one of his brothers is a prisoner, and the other a revolutionary. Pablo asks Milly to help him with English in exchange for practicing Spanish, and one day makes a comment that changes Milly's life: he tells her that her eyes look like those of the mountain village Los Luceros. Also, Milly overhears an angry family discussion in which her unhappy grandmother Happy effectively writes her out of her will as she is not a "blood" relation.Milly begins to slowly examine her feelings by confronting "The Box," a mahogany box containing her adoption papers, naturalization papers, two locks of hair (one light, one dark), a coin, and several photos, and in a brave speech running for a class office, tells the story of her adoption to the school at large. The second half of the novel chronicles Milly's journey to her homeland. When Milly's home country is freed from tyranny and democracy is slowly put into place, she takes up Mrs. Bolívar's invitation to visit, searching for traces of her shadowy past. Milly and Paco become more than just friends, bonded by the shared sadness of having lost loved ones in the war.The novel does not have a "fairy tale" ending where everything works out perfectly, but the ending provided a satisfying conclusion to Milly's journey. Realistically written and beautifully described, Alvarez captures a girl torn between cultures, languages, and her past, and how Milly, now Milagros, makes all the pieces fit.