num_pages: 400
description: For a runaway slave in the 1840s south life on the run can be just as dangerous as life under a sadistic Massa. Thats what fifteen-year-old Naomi learns after she escapes the brutal confines of life on an Alabama plantation. Striking out on her own she must leave behind her beloved Momma and sister Hazel and takes refuge in a Georgia brothel run by a freewheeling gun-toting Jewish madam named Cynthia. There amidst a revolving door of gamblers prostitutes and drunks Naomi falls into a star-crossed love affair with a smooth-talking white man named Jeremy who frequents the brothels dice tables all too often.The product of this union is Josey whose white skin and blonde hair mark her as different from the other slave children on the plantation. Having been taken in as an infant by a free slave named Charles Josey has never known her mother who was murdered at her birth.Deftly weaving together the stories of Josey and Naomiwho narrates the entire novel unable to leave her daughter alone in the land of the livingGrace is a sweeping intergenerational saga featuring a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history.
language: English
title: Grace
publisher: Counterpoint