Opposites Attract in Hallmark Movies & Mysteries’ A Gift of Miracles

In the latest Hallmark Movies & Mysteries made-for-TV movie A Gift of Miracles, Darcy Miller (Rachel Boston from Witches of East End) is a pragmatic scientist working on her doctorate degree. But when her mentor, Dr. Reed (Veena Sood from the box office film 50/50), tells Darcy that her grant proposal needs work – it sounds too analytical and is lacking “passion” to convince fundraisers to support it – she has to start over.

Dr. Reed recommends that Darcy work with the college’s English department professor Nathan Riley (Jesse Moss from Cedar Cove) to rewrite the proposal, putting more emotion into the paper. As you can imagine, the first meeting between Nathan and Darcy doesn’t go that well simply because Darcy is logical and a realist while Nathan is imaginative and a bit of a dreamer.

It takes a bad storm, a broken attic window and the necessary clean-up from that accident to bring these two together back together. They work together to not only make Darcy’s grant proposal more enticing but also to allow her to graduate. Along the way it also brings Darcy closer to the mother she lost when she was only one year old and allows Darcy to discover that sometimes what fate puts in our path is connected in more ways than we can conceive through logic.

While helping her dad with the clean-up after the storm, Darcy discovers a small journal inside a trunk buried under some boxes in the attic. The trunk belonged to her mother and the journal contained a “to do” list that her mother never completed. The list includes four items – a flower vase, antique chairs, champagne glasses and a cookbook – that were all to be given to people that Darcy does not know except for her aunt. When Darcy tells Nathan about the list, he is convinced that by completing this list that it will help Darcy with her grant proposal.

At a local floral nursery, Darcy meets an old school friend of her mother’s – Elaine (Gwynyth Walsh from Da Vinci’s Inquest) – who tells Darcy about her mother’s love of flowers. This visit also introduces Darcy to Beverly (veteran actress Rita Moreno) [more on her shortly]. Nathan and Darcy then take her mother’s cookbook to her Aunt Kathy (Sarah-Jane Redmond from Smallville), who has them help bake Turtle Brownies for Kathy’s handyman Mike, who recently broke his arm. During that visit it turns out that Darcy’s mom used to babysit Mike. All these seemingly random connections intrigue Nathan, but Darcy remains steadfast that they are unrelated.

But when Nathan and Darcy inadvertently meet up with Molly Dixon (Jill Teed from the made-for-TV movie The Christmas Shepherd), a shop owner who was to receive the glasses, she begins to believe in the same way as Nathan. However, when they attempt to find the last person on her mother’s “to do” list, who was to receive the chairs, Darcy and Nathan instead find Beverly, who holds a deep connection to Darcy’s past. A connection that just might derail everything.

Without giving up the charming way that this movie concludes, placing all the puzzle pieces of this “to do” list in place, suffice it to say, this movie has a tender ending that shows that not everything can be explained with a scientific approach but with an open heart and a little bit of imagination.

This movie also stars Andrew Airlie (Cedar Cove) as Darcy’s dad Frank and Ecstasia Sanders (True Justice and the made-for-TV movie Paper Angels) as Darcy’s best friend and roommate Mindy.

A Gift of Miracles will debut on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries on Sunday, February 15 at 9/8c.