Unaccustomed to Grace: Stories

The stories in Unaccustomed to Grace are often set in a slant version of reality where the extraordinary can exist side-by-side with the ordinary. In “Waiting for Ivy” a woman grieving the loss of her infant daughter discovers a listserv of parents whose dead children have been returned, as if the tragedy were a clerical error. In “Corpse Walks Into a Bar” an indigent loner agrees to bury a reanimated corpse, not realizing what it takes to find a resting place when the dead are as self-serving as the living. Characters throughout the collection act on impulses, quixotic to ferocious: a suburban dad leads a violent riot against his neighbor; an eleven-year-old boy puts himself at the nexus of a manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber. Ultimately, the book plumbs the messiness we bring on ourselves with the best of intentions, and how we find connection and work to build a world we can survive.