Tender Grace

by Jackina Stark

Overview

Audrey Eaton awakes at three in the morning and gets up to retrieve her husband, Tom, from the recliner where he has fallen asleep watching a ball game. But when she enters the living room and looks at his gentle face in the soft lamp light, she knows their time together is over. Grief attacks her until all she can think about is how much she wants her old life back. Determined to find healing, she embarks on a journey to the one place Tom and she always intended to visit but never did. Along the way, she discovers, through shared experiences with friends old and new, the meaning of the "tender graces" God provides each and every day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441204196
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jackina (pronounced with a long "i" to rhyme with China) Stark recently retired from teaching English at Ozark Christian College to spend more time writing and traveling. During the twenty-eight years she taught at OCC, she traveled nationally and internationally to speak and teach, and wrote many articles for denominational magazines. She has been married to her husband, Tony, for forty-two years. They live in Carl Junction, Missouri, and have two daughters and six grandchildren.
Jackina (pronounced with a long "i" to rhyme with China) Stark recently retired from teaching English at Ozark Christian College to spend more time writing and traveling. During the twenty-eight years she taught at OCC, she traveled nationally and internationally to speak and teach, and wrote many articles for denominational magazines. She has been married to her husband, Tony, for forty-two years. They live in Carl Junction, Missouri, and have two daughters and six grandchildren.

Editorial Reviews

The literature of widowhood is compelling-Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking had an impact well beyond her usual readership. Novelist Stark, a retired English teacher who's not afraid to invoke the great classic poets, makes a lovely debut in this story of Audrey Eaton, a widow whose road trip is also a healing journey. That plot device is not new, but Eaton's writing is fresh and delicate, successfully expressing nuance in a narrative that is mostly about emotions, not events. Her dialogue is witty and easy; an interlude at a homeless shelter is nice comic relief. The Christian elements required for the evangelical audience are natural for the plot-lots of bereaved people derive comfort from renewed faith. But they're slightly overdone; God's work can be apparent in a story of transformation even without explicit labeling, especially with a narrator given to dignified understatement. If Stark's next book does more showing and less telling with the elements of faith, she could gain the larger audience she deserves. (Feb.)

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Publishers Weekly

In Stark's debut novel, Audrey Eaton fights her grief over losing her husband by traveling. Along the way, she rediscovers her love of living and the graces God puts in each person's life.

—Tamara Butler

Library Journal