Bookreporter.com - A PECULIAR GRACE by Jeffrey Lent

A PECULIAR GRACE
Jeffrey Lent
Grove Press
Fiction
Hardcover: 0871139650
Paperback: 9780802143662

Forty-three-year-old Hewitt Pearce is a blacksmith content with living alone in his family home in rural Vermont, where he watches over his late father's artwork and pounds hot iron to create custom ironwork for clients of his choosing. Except for occasional visits with neighbors and a few friends, he minds his own business and expects others to do the same.

Then, one morning in early June, when "the sun was up over the eastern ridge and striking the top of the western ridge, the young leaves of the treeline illuminated more golden than green, glowing," Hewitt decides to check out a vehicle that had passed through his yard in the middle of the night.

After driving his old red Farmall tractor into the woods, he discovers a Volkswagen Beetle with a Mississippi license plate. The crudely handpainted Beetle is sitting in the middle of the road and is packed full of clothes and belongings. Nearby, a young woman with black hair, badly cropped, sits perched on a rock in front of a small fire. Jessica is out of gas, out of money and on her way to Texas. Her pretty voice is "deep but dragging sweet over the syllables as if words others took for granted were savored and valued throughout their possible peaks and valleys."

Jessica is a confused, fragile waif, yet she knows how to handle a car being towed. After Hewitt removes the Beetle from the woods, he feels a strange connection with her and convinces her to stay with him until she is able to move on. At first, her untamed ways and unsettling presence upset the gentle balance of his artistic and hermetic way of life. But he slowly becomes accustomed to having her around and discovers how much his solitary existence has prevented him from enjoying everyday companionship.

Hewitt's life becomes even more unsettled after he learns that Emily, his first love and the woman with whom he once lived in a commune, is now a widow. He tries to reconnect with Emily to ask her forgiveness for a long-ago transgression and is surprised when he discovers that Emily's life isn't what it appears to be. He is torn between pursuing the love he lost and always hoped to regain and his growing attachment to the unpredictable and mysterious Jessica.

As he gradually uncovers the reason for Jessica's secrecy and state of mind, Hewitt feels an even stronger connection to her but is shocked when he learns from her a secret related to a tragic loss suffered by his father decades earlier.

Hewitt and Jessica are intriguing and complex protagonists, but secondary characters also shine: Walter, the disabled Vietnam veteran and loyal friend; Mary Margaret, Hewitt's strong-willed, Irish-immigrant mother; and Thomas, Hewitt's long-deceased father whose influence, along with his art, is not far from reach.

Like Hewitt, the blacksmith who pounds hot iron to shape intricate works of art from his unique vision, author Jeffrey Lent uses his distinctive writer's voice to craft a painfully elegant story about love, art and second chances that is a joy to behold and one that is not easily forgotten.

--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt (dvolkenannt@charter.net)

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.