About Grace - by Anthony Doerr (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes a preview from the author's "All the light we cannot see."

Book Synopsis

The first novel by Anthony Doerr, the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning author of Cloud Cuckoo Land, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See, a luminous work of literary fiction and one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling debuts of recent times.

David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen--a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in a supermarket. When David dreams that his infant daughter will drown in a flood as he tries to save her, he comes undone. He travels thousands of miles, fleeing family, home, and the future itself, to deny the dream.

On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind.

Doerr's characters are full of grief and longing, but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose, he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. About Grace is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.

Review Quotes

"About Grace celebrates the blessings all around us, whether it's the miracle of forgiveness by our loved ones, or the miracle of nature all around us."-- "Denver Post"

"About Grace is an extended meditation on the tides and eddies of life itself, spun out in sentences that never fail to thrill, amaze or edify."-- "Los Angeles Times"

"A beautiful and expansive novel. . . As I neared the end, I read more and more slowly, increasingly reluctant to leave this intricately imagined world behind."-- "Washington Post"

"A remarkable novel."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"A stunning meditation on chance and pattern, exile and home. Gorgeous, transporting, and deeply, deeply satisfying. Equal parts science and magic (but all of it magical)."--Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

"A taut, gorgeously written odyssey of heartbreak and self-forgiveness."--Julia Glass, National Book Award-winning author of Three Junes

"Doerr deftly weaves a tale of one man's struggle to make peace with his life."-- "Vogue"

"I loved this wonderful book--its strangeness, its obsessiveness, its beautiful sentences."--Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane

"One of those novels that works its way into your very dreams."-- "Newsday"

"There's a rapture with nature expressed in prose that sings off the page; an infinitely subtle algebra of resonance and sympathy between minds, lives, objects, light, senses, weather."-- "New York Times"

"This mesmerizing novel is pitch perfect . . . utterly unforgettable."-- "Seattle Post-Intelligencer"

"Truly beautiful. . . Doerr has a talent for painting vibrant, enchanting scenes."-- "San Francisco Chronicle"

About the Author

Anthony Doerr is the author of the New York Times bestselling Cloud Cuckoo Land, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and All the Light We Cannot See, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the Alex Award, and a #1 New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of the story collections Memory Wall and The Shell Collector, the novel About Grace, and the memoir Four Seasons in Rome. He has won five O. Henry Prizes, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Story Prize. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two sons.