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Miracle Found
(short version) A community learns that miracles can happen, that life is not a series of random events and that every person and every event has a purpose.
Miracle Found by Yisroel Goodman
Life has not been abundantly kind to fifteen-year-old Nina Ryan. With her braces, glasses, and boyish figure, she is one of the “Geek Twins” at school, along with her next door neighbor and best friend, Race Jason. While Nina prefers to sit quietly in back of the classroom and avoid drawing attention to herself, Race is comfortable with his geekness. Outgoing, funny, brilliant, and generous, he lets the bullies’ taunts roll right off him. When he learns of someone with a problem, he moves right in to assist, even without being asked. From finding “free” computers and “free” groceries, to befriending a suicidal teen, he helps many in the community, often anonymously. He is also obsessed with proving the existence of miracles.
One day he shares the reason for his obsession. At eight years old, he was killed in a car accident, only to be resuscitated. He still has memories of a bright light and his grandparents spirits telling him to return. He knows there is an afterlife and is convinced that the purpose of life is to help others. His enemies mock him, and even his friends believe that he only experienced a very realistic dream. Then Race recalls a new detail; that in the light he met another boy who had died and was sent back. If he can find this boy, and the boy remembers the same experience, it will prove that it was not a dream.
Nina joins Race, both in his quest to find the other boy and in his goal to help others. Race constructs a web site called Miracle Found, where people seeking assistance and people willing to help can meet. Together, Nina and Race begin to accomplish amazing things.
Then tragedy strikes and it falls to shy, quiet Nina to complete the tasks Race had begun. At times she feels overwhelmed, but then help comes from mysterious sources, such as e-mails from Race’s computer written before his death, and messages from his autistic brother who claims to be talking to Race.
It seems that Race had a vision in which he saw terrible futures for a number of people unless someone intervened. He had done what he could and managed to save at least two lives. He had foreseen his own death, because a sacrifice was necessary to restore balance. But more lives still depend on Nina. How can she reconcile a father and son who come to blows with every discussion? Help a friend with her alcoholic mother? Reunite two sisters who haven’t spoken in eight years? And what can she do about the severely disturbed teenage boy, the surviving witness of the horrific murder-suicide of his parents?
Calling upon a hidden reserve of determination, and finding help in the most unexpected places, Nina sets out to solve these problems. In the end, she and the entire town discover that angels and miracles do exist - in the form of ordinary people accomplishing extraordinary things.
Note: Though there is an element of the supernatural in this story, it is not a horror or fantasy story. The supernatural portion is only a minor thread.
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