Act of Grace

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Summary / Annotation

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Very Touching submitted by njdsilva on August 10, 2011, 3:46pm This book is a great discussion of race and racial tensions. Do not be put off by the African shamanic element of the book. It is a beautiful story, based on the true story of a college student in Ann Arbor in the '90's who shielded a white supremacist from the crowd's blows, injuring herself instead.

Won me over submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 26, 2013, 1:13pm Y'know, as I started reading this book I was thinking I would give it 3 stars... pretty much entirely because it has got a paranormal premise (Grace talks to and acts on behalf of "the ancestors"), and that is so COMPLETELY not "my thing." But I kept reading because Simpson is a local Michigan author, and because my favorite local indie bookstore recommended it, and because the writing was good.

And the author won me over. Paranormal still isn't my thing, but this book used that idea as a tool to talk about forgiveness, hope, community race relations, love, parent-child relationships, and much much more. Let me tell you, Simpson does that incredibly well. She handles difficult topic after difficult topic with grace (no pun intended) and honesty. There are scenes and ideas that I just can't shake, even after setting this novel down.

Very well done (and *especially* for a first novel!), and worth adding to your reading list.

A Powerful Read That Will Stick With You submitted by geometrick on February 11, 2016, 8:49am This book is also a coming-of-age story. My book group just read this and couldn't stop talking about it. The characters are well-written and stay true to form. We didn't feel there were extra characters that didn't serve a purpose. There were just so many layers to discuss about this. It's just written so beautifully that even the book club members who weren't crazy about the book appreciated the craftsmanship of it. However, most of my book club members seemed to more than just like it - some were already talking about re-reading it!

Most of us thought we wouldn't like the paranormal part but, as I asked, is it really paranormal or is it just that different religions have different ways to believe? Most religions do have things about them that other people might look at as paranormal, if you think about it, that way. With that in-mind, I didn't find this strange, even though I would say that I don't like the paranormal in books. That didn't stop us from discussing this book practically until the cows came home!

Local author submitted by pamhockey25 on August 13, 2021, 4:53pm A bit on the paranormal side, this book explores a number of difficult topics in such an interesting way. Beautifully written, I highly recommend this book.