Grace

In the east Texas town of Cold Springs in 1944, the whole populace seemed to wait, collective breath held, for the war to end. In this place where certain boundaries were not breached, in a time when people revealed little about themselves, their problems, and their passions, Grace takes readers into the lives of four families on the 900 block of Pine Street. Bound together by their neighborhood and their Southern etiquette and separated by class, money, and family, the people inhabiting Grace are an unforgettable lot, vibrantly brought to life.

Grace Gillian, abandoned by her husband, thinks of herself in mundane terms. But she is an extraordinarily passionate and impulsive woman whose "wild Irish streak" will soon land her either trouble, happiness, or some combination of both. The heart and eponym of the novel, Grace works toward closure with her past, as her story intertwines with those of her neighbors-and readers will turn the pages, with an anticipation similar to that of Wood's characters, to learn at last what the future holds.

As the war grinds toward a conclusion, it becomes the catalyst that drives the inhabitants of Cold Springs across the boundaries that had once divided them, taking them to places both chaotic and astonishing-places where, as Grace Gillian says, "So many kinds of love" abide.