Bethesda -Paul Nigro - New Book Paperback

New listed as "Like New" because it's been on shelf for a while and is a little dusty

Arabella Ruiz, the bartender at a seedy joint in the Bronx called the Dutchman, drifts over to the church down the street, St. Fred's, hoping for a quick handout to make sure there is food on the table that night for her and her deaf daughter, Miranda.

Carla Donovan is not your typical pastor. Female. Single. Raised Catholic, she still harbors resentment over the ban of woman in ministry, which is more pervasive among her Protestant brethren than she ever imagined. St. Fred's is not a plum assignment, simply the only ministry opportunity offered to her.

As Arabella and Carla talk, 3-year-old Miranda wanders down to the basement of St. Fred's and is delighted to discover water bubbling at the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool. As she splashes in the water, something happens to her for the very first time in her young life…she can hear.

Arabella, whose life is spent with the dregs of society, claims a miracle, and insists that Carla open the pool for everyone who needs healing. Carla, who is skeptical and discouraged, ready to leave the ministry for another occupation, simply calls a company to figure out how the water got into the pool that has lain empty and in disrepair for years.

Then St. Fred's janitor secretly brings his father, who has suffered with Alzheimer's for years, to the pool--and his father too is healed. Now nothing can keep crowds from thronging on the front steps of St. Fred's, clamoring to be allowed into the pool, which is unexplainably filled with gurgling water.

Carla, against all her reason and cynicism, begins to wonder about her own doubts after a third apparent miracle occurs. But before she can even begin to sort through her own tattered faith, she must deal with violent threats that lead to an attempt on her life.

Carla begins to discover, however, that her greatest danger is not from those outside St. Fred's, but perhaps from someone within the church who doesn't want a deep, dark secret-buried beneath the miracle pool-to be revealed.