Strange, extraordinary things are happening in Hudson City. A beautiful Vietnamese-American girl has been appearing to residents in their dreams, and there are reports that bum legs, sinus headaches, and tonsillitis are clearing up all over town. Amazingly, one young man has even spontaneously regained his hearing. And the Miracle Girl, newspapers and local TV eagerly report, is deaf.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Quinn manages real estate for the Catholic diocese, but he's a man of little faith. Raised on Watergate and Vietnam, nurtured on the materialism of the eighties and nineties, he couldn't be less likely to believe in miracles. Sue Phong, he is certain, is a fraud. But thousands of pilgrims are pouring into upstate New York, eager for healing, hope, or even just a glimpse of the Miracle Girl.

In this sweltering late summer, as the media circus - dubbed "miracle mania" - heats up, Quinn's world is falling apart. His sex life has disintegrated, and he's pretty sure that Rita, the love of his life, is having an affair. Inching ever closer to forty, he feels trapped in his dead-end church job. And in the middle of it all, his friend Buddy Jensen is trying to sweeten their latest business deal, forcing Quinn to take a hard look at the fine line between a favor and a kickback. He's primed for a midlife crisis, if not a spiritual one.

And then Quinn finds himself unexpectedly face to face with the enigmatic Sue Phong, and everything begins to change. She teaches him about disillusionment and redemption, and about faith - in himself, in the people he loves, and in the possibility of something greater than all of us. Quinn's heart and hopes, along with those of his entire community,become inextricably intertwined with one young woman who really might be the Miracle Girl.