House of Miracles

House of Miracles is about love—the romantic love of days gone by, first love, unrequited love, and the fragile intimacies of a couple living in the last part of the twentieth century. In these delightful, at times unsettling stories, we meet two very different women: baby boomer Janet MacDonald, who, despite a blossoming career in San Francisco, feels sure that she is cursed, and her elderly, eccentric neighbor, Mrs. von Meurs. When Janet’s relationship with boyfriend Jack, a struggling photographer, is tested, they drift dangerously apart. It is Mrs. von Meurs, alone and at the end of her life, who tries to keep them together. At the heart of House of Miracles is the kaleidoscopic way the diverse characters are connected to Janet and Mrs. von Meurs. Secrets are revealed, and each woman must find her way, whether through a troubled past or into an uncertain future. Sometimes it seems that hope is not only “the thing with feathers,” but it is all they have. That, and the real possibility of miracles.

House of Miracles is about love—the romantic love of days gone by, first love, unrequited love, and the fragile intimacies of a couple living in the last part of the twentieth century. In these delightful, at times unsettling stories, we meet two very different women: baby boomer Janet MacDonald, who, despite a blossoming career in San Francisco, feels sure that she is cursed, and her elderly, eccentric neighbor, Mrs. von Meurs. When Janet’s relationship with boyfriend Jack, a struggling photographer, is tested, they drift dangerously apart. It is Mrs. von Meurs, alone and at the end of her life, who tries to keep them together. At the heart of House of Miracles is the kaleidoscopic way the diverse characters are connected to Janet and Mrs. von Meurs. Secrets are revealed, and each woman must find her way, whether through a troubled past or into an uncertain future. Sometimes it seems that hope is not only “the thing with feathers,” but it is all they have. That, and the real possibility of miracles.

Ulrica Hume is an award-winning writer. Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Bloomsbury Review, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. An Uncertain Age, her debut novel, was longlisted for a Northern California Book Award and selected as a literary fiction finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards. House of Miracles, her collection of interrelated tales about love, was a finalist for the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship; the title story was selected by the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project and broadcast on National Public Radio.