The Matter of Grace

By Eleanor F. Jourdain

Book Overview

Booklist praised Her Daughter's Eyes as "a modern-day depiction of familial disintegration with offbeat twists and luminous sparks of hope." Now, Jessica Barksdale Inclán reveals the closely intertwined lives of four women-their struggles to be good wives, mothers, friends-and the troubled secrets they hide. Every summer, Felice, Helen, Stella, and Grace meet at Oakland View Swim and Tennis Club, watching their children learn to swim, slowly becoming friends. After seven years, there is no reason to think things will ever change-until the summer Grace's illness returns. On the brink of crisis, as the women try to help Grace confront a trauma that begins to seem quite different from what she claims, they are forced to examine their own lives...and face a painful truth. That they don't really know Grace-or themselves-at all...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451205758
• ISBN13: 9780451205759
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Berkley
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.6" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

An Obvious Matter

This novel is about a woman who tries to conceal her eating disorder and her very close friends that basically allow her to do so for quite a long time.In Oakland, Grace and 3 of her local swim club buddies make a strong friendship over the years. Nearly every day they see each other and share each other's sorrows and happiness. In the beginning of their friendship Grace divulges a story of surviving cancer. When her weight...

The Matter of Grace (Jessica Barksdale Inclan)

Felice, Stella, Helen and Grace are four women who have been friends for about 7 years. Each week they gather and meet at a local swimming club where they involve themselves in conversation while their children learn to swim. Ms. Barksdale Inclan allows us a look at the closely intertwined friendship these four women share. Women who are struggling with motherhood, friendship, being a wife and the adversity that comes with...

The Matter of Grace

In her second novel, the Matter of Grace, Jessica Barksdale Inclan again draws us into contemporary California suburbia, where daily life is emotionally complicated despite outward appearances for four women who find themselves striving (often struggling) to be good mothers, wives and friends while reflecting on and acceppting where childhood-family influences and choices have lead them. Through well-developed characters,...