There Will Be No Miracles Here: A Memoir
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The testament of a boy and a generation who came of age as the world came apart—a generation searching for a new way to live.
Casey Gerald comes to our fractured times as a uniquely visionary witness whose life has spanned seemingly unbridgeable divides. His story begins at the end of the world: Dallas, New Year's Eve 1999, when he gathers with the congregation of his grandfather's black evangelical church to see which of them will be carried off. His beautiful, fragile mother disappears frequently and mysteriously; for a brief idyll, he and his sister live like Boxcar Children on her disability checks. When Casey—following in the footsteps of his father, a gridiron legend who literally broke his back for the team—is recruited to play football at Yale, he enters a world he's never dreamed of, the anteroom to secret societies and success on Wall Street, in Washington, and beyond. But even as he attains the inner sanctums of power, Casey sees how the world crushes those who live at its margins. He sees how the elite perpetuate the salvation stories that keep others from rising. And he sees, most painfully, how his own ascension is part of the scheme.
There Will Be No Miracles Here has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but it stands the American Dream narrative on its head. If to live as we are is destroying us, it asks, what would it mean to truly live? Intense, incantatory, shot through with sly humor and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Here inspires us to question—even shatter—and reimagine our most cherished myths.
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Reviews for There Will Be No Miracles Here
28 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I found this simply unreadable. I tried. I really tried.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I saw this on a couple of best of 2018 lists and thought the title interesting, so I picked it up. I knew nothing about it and had never heard of the author and still don't know much about who he is. Turns out, this book is a memoir. Casey Gerald, like many people, faced a tough upbringing. Impacted by poverty, racism, he had parents who lacked presence in his life due to struggles with mental illness (mom) and drug addiction/prison (dad). He had people who loved and supported him fiercely though, including an older sister who worked hard to get an education and better her circumstances, and his grandma.Casey is a good kid, albeit a lonely one, without a consistent, strong, and healthy male role model in his life. He floats through school and life, basically getting by...until he hits high school and discovers that he's inherited the football skills and athleticism of his father. He lives in Texas where football is king and because he's intelligent enough and mostly stays out of trouble, Yale comes knocking to recruit him for a full ride football scholarship. He got an Ivy education, parlayed that into a Harvard MBA, started a business, and is a Ted speaker.Casey's writing style is stream of consciousness. The book is written like an Instagram story of memory snapshots, loosely connected, and sometimes filtered. He's probably a better oral storyteller (he has a Ted talk, after all), than he is a writer. Not that he's a poor writer, but he's just not got that much to say that's revelatory.I gave up reading when Casey was recruited to Yale and I realized there's no there, there. I'm sure Casey's a nice guy and I'm glad his life seems to be working out well. But, the thing is, Casey seems to have had a lot more breaks than most: he has people in his life who love and care for him, coaches and teachers who motivated and believed in him. He got good genes and athletic talent that led to a full-ride scholarship. His Yale, then Harvard graduate education give him access to a network of professional opportunities that most people only dream of.Though it may have the ingredients ripe for an interesting memoir, there's not enough meat on the bones yet. He's still young and hasn't had the time to fully come into his own and live a full life. The measure of a life is the positive impact on others--he's still building the runway. The best, most interesting or inspiring parts of his life may be what lie ahead, not what he left behind.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Outstanding. Insightful, questioning, encouraging, literary. Looking for/finding answers.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book should be getting more attention.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I listened to the audiobook, as read by the author. It is a memoir of his childhood, his young adulthood, and the barest beginning of his adulthood. One of the great strenghts of this memorior is the prose style, which I found lyrical and excruciatingly honest. Gerald has a remarkable talent for telling stories, of which his memories of his childhood are a particularly good example.The second half of the book is significantly more complicated and open-ended, as I imagine the author's life is right now. Be warned, this is a book that doesn't claim to have an answers but poses some good questions.