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A little town in East Texas called Cold Springs is the setting for this World War II novel, GRACE, by Jane Roberts Wood. In the year 1944, as the world waited for the War to End All Wars finally to be over, four families on Pine Street find themselves experiencing a variety of life's traumas together, even though they are completely and inalterably not living the same lives. Some are poor, some have a longer and richer tradition of Southern aristocracy to fall back on, but they are all human and full of foibles. Together, their lives make up the bulk of GRACE, a lilting tour of small-town American life just before the world turns over and a brave new era begins.
Grace is the main character. Grace Gillian to be exact, a woman left behind by a callous man for whom she holds reserves of love in her heart. She makes much of her Irish heritage, offering that it will get her in trouble and, indeed, it does. But Grace's effect on the other families living in her community is big and, as the war drags on, she finds a way to help everyone realize that love truly does jump across dividing lines to draw people together in the worst of times as well as the best.
The author, who has won significant awards for her work from PEN and other prestigious outfits, has a gentle manner that befits her subjects. Southern gentility is apparent in the way in which she stakes out her proprietary claim on an oft-used era --- the world just before the war ends is the last bastion of sufficient innocence in American culture, as it were. Jane Roberts Wood finds a way to make World War II interesting even to me, someone who is definitely at odds with those who revere the era. Perhaps because we finally have a female protagonist do I find Wood's work pleasant to read. Pleasant isn't meant to be a bad thing here, but rather, a compliment --- it is rare that I read anything about communities overcoming their differences in which the political pretense doesn't smother the characters and storylines. Here that doesn't happen. GRACE is full of exactly that, and Wood fashions a genuinely touching novel about the lives of the people the war truly touched the most here at home.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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