Title: The Wonder
Description: Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's *The Wonder* - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth - is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. 

Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.

-------

In this masterpiece by Emma Donoghue, an English nurse brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle -- a girl said to have survived without food for months -- soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life. 

Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. As Anna deteriorates, Lib finds herself responsible not just for the care of a child, but for getting to the root of why the child may actually be the victim of murder in slow motion. 

Written with all the propulsive tension that made *Room* a huge bestseller, *The Wonder* works beautifully on many levels--a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil.
Subjects: Irish Midlands, Nightingale Nurse, Post Crimean War, Inspired by Real Life Events, Fasting, Catholicism, Ireland, fiction, Fiction, psychological, Fiction, historical, Sick children, Social life and customs, Nurses, Religious aspects, Fiction, Girls, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, historical, general, Fiction, thrillers, suspense, Large type books, Manners and customs, Survival, Eleven-year-old girls, FICTION / Small Town & Rural
Places: Irish Midlands, Ireland
Time periods: 1850s, 19th century