At a reading in South Carolina, Shannon, a mid-list novelist, is approached by an elegant older woman, Margaret Stevenson, a “blueblood,” who introduces her companion, Grace Ferrell, and says: “Grace has a miraculous story. It needs to be told. Neither she nor I can write it.” Normally novelists hate this: they prefer to create their own stories, but Shannon agrees to a lunch and Grace tells the first part of her story.
In 1994, not 1594, Grace, a child in Oklahoma, was given in marriage by her mother to a man nearly 40 when she was only 15, in the ninth grade. They had to cross into Texas to do this. Shannon is struck at once by Grace’s story. At 42, Grace is a grandmother to a four-year-old child. Shannon’s own daughter Millie is 39 and has children, a toddler and a newborn.
Grace’s tale is not for the faint of heart. Her father was a drunk who left and her unhappy mother was useless, negligent, mean and unpredictable. Grace, 13 years old, just finishing the eighth grade, meets Rafe, appropriately enough, at a rattlesnake derby. Before long he has moved into their trailer and begins going into Grace’s bedroom every night, waging a relentless campaign of sexual molestation and abuse, and finally rape. In what seems impossibly cruel, Grace’s mother and older stepbrother, both also in the 10-foot-wide trailer, know what is happening and don’t stop it.
After their initial meeting, Shannon agrees to hear the entire story and they meet at Margaret’s beach house on Pawley’s Island. Over several days, Grace tells Shannon the rest of her story: her time with Rafe, years of physical fear, poverty, humiliation, abuse, isolation, repeated pregnancies and miscarriages.
Amazingly, Grace managed to get some education, a GED, became a certified nurse’s aide, then an assistant at a police station. Obviously, for years, she wanted to leave and should have but, as always in these situations, the problem is HOW. Finally, triggered by fears for her daughters’ safety, and with the help of some caring people who perceive her predicament, Grace escapes.
An interesting wrinkle in this novel is the effect Grace’s tale has on Shannon. Shannon has divorced an alcoholic husband and is worried and guilty in her bones that her daughter Millie is in a bad marriage and it is Shannon’s fault that she doesn’t leave. Has she set a bad example for her daughter in tolerating a drunk husband for much too long, and being an enabler?
Zurenda’s two previous novels were no walk in the park. “Bells for Eli” and “The Girl at the Red Rose Motel” are pretty grim stories, but this novel in which adults, who should be protectors, throw a child to the wolves is the darkest yet.
