The wrong answer to a village’s prayers

It is one of the more enduring and interesting of human truths: how the needs that inspire faith can also occasion gullibility. One’s yearning for a higher love may persuade a person to believe in miracles, but it can also leave one vulnerable to scams. This rich premise is what Jeff Shapiro sets out to dramatize in his entertaining, but flawed, second novel, “Secrets of Sant’Angelo.”

The novel takes us into the small Italian village of Sant’Angelo D’Asso, the same spot where Shapiro’s first novel, “Renato’s Luck,” was set. The village has been visited by a long season of misfortune in the form of torrential rains, influenza outbreaks and unusual deaths. Just as adversity has begun to wear down the townspeople, two newcomers arrive, a beautiful woman and her grown son, and in no time, these two have both seduced and raised suspicion in many of Sant’Angelo’s residents.

Rosa Spina Innocenti enchants men with fantastic stories of her immaculate conception (as well as with her “miraculous breasts”), while her solemn son Emanuele Mose mesmerizes with his apparent ability to heal animals and people through prayer. Several of the town’s most emotionally fragile citizens soon become regular worshippers at the Innocentis’ apartment, where they are guided in matters of faith and in return offer up money and gifts. Episodes of discord and schism follow, including some anti-Semitic vandalism and a challenge to the authority of the town’s Roman Catholic priest.

This is ambitious stuff, and Shapiro does a fine job taking his time to carefully stir the narrative into the hearty swirl of an old-fashioned tale. There is a large cast of interesting characters, and throughout there are nicely detailed set pieces conveying the customs and traditions of village life. The mix of wonder and brutality in the butcher’s shop is a good example: “Mauro took the dark sausage from the display case and sharpened his knife. All eyes in the store watched, for there was something irresistible about the butcher’s meaty hands in action, the fingernails trimmed in blood.” Or similarly, the town’s cobbler: “Coughing, he picked up the boot and forced a fat hand inside. ‘You’d be amazed,’ he said, starting to expound on his favorite theory, ‘what you can tell about people from their shoes.’ He examined the boot as if it were a body part.” This is good, vivid writing and it’s present on every page.

But there are problems with the story’s main matter. The misfortune that has debilitated the townspeople and made them so susceptible to the Innocentis’ influence is too easily summarized in the book’s opening prologue. We do not truly feel the locals’ pain and confusion. And although we do get glimpses into the lives of those who become ardent followers of the young healer Emanuele, those glimpses tend to be overly simplistic. We do not inhabit these people beyond some rather explicitly expressed sentiments.

Many of what should be the more poignant and telling scenes are dramatically unsatisfying evasions of what we as readers want explored. When Emanuele performs his “miracle” healing on a sick sheep, the author is far too content with the scene’s heavy symbolism, and we are left only with this exchange between a small boy and his grandfather, the sheep’s owner: “ ‘Is he a magician?’ Beniamino asked after the young man disappeared into the darkness of the valley. ‘I don’t know what he is.’ Renato shivered. He pulled his coat around his body. ‘Come on, Beniamino. Help me get the sheep together. I can’t understand a thing, but it’s time to get ourselves inside.’ ”

We never find out much about the characters’ misgivings, about what makes them so willing to give themselves over to such mystical occurrences. As these occurrences multiply, we’re offered little between blind acceptance from the neediest and shrugged shoulders from the doubtful.

This presents such a problem in the book because when the truth of what really happened with that sheep comes at the story’s climax, among other revelations about how the townspeople have been treated, plausibility is badly strained. These decent folk seem to have been too easily duped, and whatever summoned and fostered their gullibility remains unrevealed.

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Adam Hill is a poet whose works have appeared in the American Poetry Review; Hill has also written for Spin and Signal to Noise.