Sometimes, There’s Just No Fixing It: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

First of all, here’s a shoutout to book friends. They’re the best kind of friend. You might not see or hear from someone in weeks, months or even years. But slide into my DMs with a book rec, and we can pick right up where we left off and talk books back and forth forever.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim came to me this way. A friend checked in to see if I had read any of her books, and I had to say no. Happiness Falls is on my TBR list, but I don’t know that I knew Kim was the author.

My friend recommended Miracle Creek — so I downloaded and immediately found myself glued to my iPad for the next couple of days.

I can’t believe I didn’t read this sooner.

I may be late to the party on this one, but nonetheless, a trigger warning — it’s special needs parenting and care gone horribly wrong. Keep that in mind, and set the book back down if the subject matter is a little too intense or you’re feeling a little raw.

It’s not a spoiler to say a child dies, as does a mother — the tentpole event through which this novel is laid out is the trial of the alleged perpetrator of an explosion of a hyperbaric chamber.

What’s incredible is Kim’s ability to flesh out more than one sympathetic-yet-unreliable narrator, leaving you guessing until nearly the end as to who is guilty.

Those narrators take turns, from chapter to chapter, providing the backstory to what ultimately leads to the death of one mother and another mother’s child. And it allows readers to consider the ramifications of decisions parents make — whether it’s moving to another country and being largely absent from your child’s life, through to running yourself ragged trying to find any and all cures for intellectual and developmental disabilities. Because, after all — you love your kid. You’ll do anything for your kid. You’ll try anything for your kid.

As a parent to a special needs child-now-adult, there was a lot of nodding going on while reading this. The anxiety is next-level. I don’t know that I can explain it any better than that. You just worry. All. the.time. As such, the variety of fight or flight experiences these mothers go through is entirely relatable.

Kim also leans heavily into the inner workings of marriage and partnership. Are the secrets we keep in deference to or in spite of our partners? Is love enough to look past some really egregious decisionmaking, or is it time to throw in the towel?

And because there’s a fine line between doing what makes sense and taking things too far, readers are treated to a well-crafted mystery with Miracle Creek. Is the villain the mom who never, ever gets any respite from full-time care of a special needs child? Is it the well-meaning but way judgy autism advocates who insist acceptance is the only path forward for these kids? Or is it a Scooby Doo-style thriller where someone just wants to cash out at the end of the day?

If you haven’t read this yet, please don’t make the mistake I did of letting this one slip past you. A fantastic, perfectly paced read and great choice for a book club convo.