["Miracle Play"] is about the Howells family of Bucks County, Pa…. Despite all their ups and downs, as the book ends, in 1976, the Howells clan is still intact. That is the "miracle play" of the title—the miracle of the family's self-renewal despite the powerful centrifugal forces exerted by historical and cultural change, and by the many accidents and ills of life….

In the best parts of "Miracle Play" Susan Shreve can suggest how particular family events reflect significant social and cultural trends without losing the rich specificity of individual character and motive….

[The theme of male supremacy and victimization of the female in earlier American social history] is built up in the book very fully. Indeed, when Hannah killed herself at home she was wearing heavy makeup, much glittering jewelry, a sexy ball gown and a Floradora hat, quite intentionally stressing, with despairing irony, her reduction to sex object and chattel of the rampant and unfaithful Senator Howells. (p. 8)

For me the book reached a peak of interest and narrative accomplishment in the story of Nat and his virtual child-bride from New Orleans, Cally. She survives not only polio but also severe mental problems to enjoy more or less peaceful later years of widowhood after she acknowledges to herself her passion for Lila, the black beauty who was her childhood playmate and later became her nurse and companion…. Equally well done and very touching is the account of the unlucky Nat Howells' death from cancer, at home in the bosom of his family when they are living in Georgetown.

After that a lot of the magic of the book is dispelled. Nat and Cally's children and their consorts have the typical experiences and notions of the 1960's and '70's yet they seem in some ways a footling lot. (pp. 8, 23)

A word in conclusion about the technical excellence of "Miracle Play." The complicated time problem occasioned by a story covering more than a century of overlapping life histories is brilliantly handled. The narrative method, involving discrete incidents of sharply focused and objective story, combining into longer chapter sequences, suggests comparisons with and influences from the best accomplishments in American still photography. In fact Susan Richards Shreve's novel is something of a slide show on Eastern upperclass American social history, professionally arranged and projected. It is well above the glut of saga fiction. (p. 23)