Familiar friends back in small-town tale

Elizabeth Berg’s new novel is a feel-good affirmation of life and love, but edgier and more interesting than the scripts one finds on the Hallmark Channel.

“Night of Miracles,” published last month, returns characters from Berg’s 2017 novel, “The Story of Arthur Truluv” although the title character, the widower Arthur, isn’t back. (He died in that story.)

Those who do return include Arthur’s crusty neighbor and baker extraordinaire, Lucille, and Maddy, the troubled teen befriended by Arthur and who now has a daughter named for Arthur’s beloved wife, Nola.

Other characters include the big and big-hearted truck driver Tiny Dawson; the waitress Monica, the woman he adores from afar • “Night of Miracles” (Random House, 273 pages,

and who serves him double orders of pigs in a blanket at the Henhouse diner; Iris, a stylish but troubled middleaged transplant from the big city; and a young couple, Jason and Abby, and their son, Lincoln.

Everyone lives in Mason, Missouri, where everybody knows everybody and their business. The linchpin is 88-year-old Lucille, who bakes delectables such as orange cake, cinnamon rolls, Mississippi Mud cookies and blueberry peach crisp and who teaches the town’s popular baking classes.

Lucille has a tongue as tart as her lemon bars, but she can’t help but be interested in and kind to neighbors and friends. She grudgingly hires Iris, who can’t bake but is a whiz at marketing. She counsels Tiny and agrees to babysit Lincoln when a health crisis hits his parents.

Each character’s story unfolds briskly and with a minimum of surprises. What elevates “Night of Miracles” is Berg’s crisp and often poetic writing and how effortlessly she weaves together her ensemble cast.

When Tiny is bitten by a spider, he tells Lucille he is not going to the emergency room where they’ll weigh him and “do an EKG and bloodwork so they can ogle my cholesterol and whatnot…They won’t even get to a spider bite. No, I ain’t going to the ER. I’m going out to breakfast.”

Lucille agrees and says she’s getting pigs in blanket.

“I’m getting the spiderbite special,” Tiny replies. “That where you get whatever you want on account of something bit you.”

All the characters’ stories converge on the night of miracles of the title, a climactic and extended ending that satisfyingly wraps up issues. An added bonus: The little town is populated with all good folks; there’s only one mean character in the story and he’s a drivethrough trucker so Mason doesn’t have to count him.