Signs and Wonders (Annie Grace adventures) [Kindle Edition]

Signs and Wonders by Alex Adena is a fascinating book. Annie Grace is a fraudulent faith healer, although when she was a little girl, she once performed a miraculous healing. Her father, Daddy, exploited this and became a very rich man through healing roadshows.
Annie feels like a fraud. A ghost from the past rears its head - Annie faces prosecution for her part in a little girl's death five years before. Two of her employees turn against her. A client secretly taperecords her making tactless remarks. It seems everyone is trying to bring Annie down. But when it seems things can't get any worse, her amazing powers return. The question is, will Annie use them for good this time?
The characters in the story are all rounded and believable. The book is very well written. It's hard to put down. And events most certainly don't follow a predictable path.
But there's more to Signs and Wonders than the story of Annie. As the author says, he wrote it "for everyone who has felt pre-defined by their upbringing and family expectations". This comes across strongly in the book. Can we change as we grow up, or are we cast in permanent roles as children by the adults around us, whether rightly or wrongly? Should we try and make other people change?
Brilliant book, hugely entertaining and very thought provoking. A definite must-read.
Alex Adena has an excellent website here [...]

Unlike many who have read Alex Adena's novella SIGNS & WONDERS, I was extremely dissatisfied with the book. Reading the brief book description before purchase, I thought it could be a good cautionary tale about blindly following faith healers, which in itself is a good lesson in spiritual discernment. However, the book ends up being about the chief protagonist, Miss Annie's, crisis of faith in blindly following her errant father's means of bilking the ministry's blind followers simply because that was how she was raised. Again, that's also not a bad lesson to learn.

However, my complaint with the book is that the author seems to be writing from preconceived notions, personal prejudices, and religious ignorance rather than attempting to convey a thought-provoking work that has substance or meaning for anyone with true crisis of faith. Chances are very good that the bulk of the faith healing ministries were BEGAN with right intent. However, along the way, with the growth, glitz and glamour, the minister starts losing focus and gets hooked by the greed and the money. So I have a hard time accepting the premise that Miss Annie's father started out with a ministry business plan to bilk and deceive. Nevertheless, I could have accepted that part of the story, if the remainder of the story had retained any authenticity. But it didn't. Adena didn't bother to research Branch Davidian and Catholic themes enough to have a story with accuracy (see Amazon Review titled NOT TOO BAD for detailed examples). He also had Miss Annie embrace almost every single Christian taboo i.e., drinking, sexual promiscuity, greed, deception, lack of modesty, etc. without absolutely no remorse or sin consciousness--which is not remotely believable for even the most apathetic of Christians. This once again demonstrates that the author didn't bother to understand the heart and mind of a Christian either. So why's he writing about religious and spiritual issues he has an uninformed grasp of in the first place?!?

The book then ends with Miss Annie experiencing a change of consciousness and seeing the error of her ways (so far so good), starting to use her healing gift anonymously for good (okay...still with you), and becoming personally accountable by admitting her guilt and serving her prison time (ve-ry good). Yet on her way to turning herself in to the authorities, Annie performs what can only be presumed to be a personal baptism of sorts ...in a lake along the side the highway ...naked as a blue jay ...with her faithful, embarrassed male employee on shore with a rope to haul her back out of the water. (Huh?!?) The storyline went over the top ludicrous for me at that moment, and there was no further hope of redemption for the book in my eyes.

At the end of it all, I was simply left terribly confused and annoyed. No where in the book is the reader made privy to a true inner struggle with issues of faith and Christianity. It was only AFTER I finished the book and found an author's note somewhere that implied Miss Annie leaves Christianity as well as the healing ministry--thereby throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water--that I finally understood the story's ending and why it sounded new age spiritual from beginning to end and totally void of any real connection with Christian beliefs.

I was quite impressed with this novella. The author has a keen insight into sometimes fake world of "faith healers" and managed to spin a fascinating tale around this setting. Personally I have no experience with Southern Baptist culture nor the regional idiosyncrasies of the South, but after reading this story, I felt like I had been given a glimpse into a whole new world. The protagonist of the story, Annie Grace, was a likable character, despite the fact that she was living a flashy charlatan lifestyle. This story had the right blend of mystery, Southern charm and real miracles to keep me reading until the end.