My name is Mike Brennan and my book - Santa Maria & The Village of Miracles - is a modern-day story about Raffa, a young Spanish priest, who fakes a miracle to save his village. It is an unpublished but professionally edited, 60,000-word piece of commercial fiction borne out of many personal experiences. Just as I have shared countless books with others, this is the kind of book I imagine being passed around on a family holiday or amongst book clubs and friends who enjoy pacey, compelling, accessible, and - at times - amusing reading.
My Catholicism is where it all started. The smells, the bells, rigidity and rote religious learning of a traditional Catholic education never leaves you. Years after leaving school and religion, I was walking through an Italian village and chanced upon the local church. Busier than it should have been for a late afternoon - and sensing excitement - I wandered in and encountered my very own miracle-of-the-blood-of-the-saint. The inner-Catholic instantly kicked in. That evening over too much red wine in a noisy trattoria, I sketched out the bones of a plot to an increasingly bored friend. Fast forward a decade and having settled in Southern Spain for a few years, I resurrected the book and traversed the mountainous white villages for ideas. It is against the rugged backdrop of Andalucía that the plot, setting, and characters took shape. Now - at the age of 56 and with a successful business career behind me - I am finally able to tell the story.
My hope is the book will appeal to a mainstream commercial audience seeking an enjoyable uplifting read. Humorous in parts, it deals with second chances, faith, forgiveness, and asks, “Is it OK to do something bad to achieve good?” Finally (and this may make it sound pedestrian to some), there is no sex, violence, swearing or drugs.
Thank you for getting this far ... if you do get a chance to review my work, I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it.
