A Peculiar Grace

Forty-three-year-old Hewitt Pearce is a blacksmith content with living alone in his family home in rural Vermont, where he watches over his late father's artwork and pounds hot iron to create custom ironwork for clients of his choosing. Except for occasional visits with neighbors and a few friends, he minds his own business and expects others to do the same. Then, one morning in early June, when "the sun was up over the eastern ridge and striking the top of the western ridge, the young leaves of the treeline illuminated more golden than green, glowing," Hewitt decides to check out a vehicle that had passed through his yard in the middle of the night. After driving his old red Farmall tractor into the woods, he discovers a Volkswagen Beetle with a Mississippi license plate. The crudely handpainted Beetle is sitting in the middle of the road and is packed full of clothes and belongings. Nearby, a young woman with black hair, badly cropped, sits perched on a rock in front of a small fire. Jessica is out of gas, out of money and on her way to Texas. Her pretty voice is "deep but dragging sweet over the syllables as if words others took for granted were savored and valued throughout their possible peaks and valleys." Jessica is a confused, fragile waif, yet she knows how to handle a car being towed. After Hewitt removes the Beetle from the woods, he feels a strange connection with her and convinces her to stay with him until she is able to move on. At first, her untamed ways and unsettling presence upset the gentle balance of his artistic and hermetic way of life. But he slowly becomes accustomed to having her around and discovers how much his solitary existence has prevented him from enjoying everyday companionship. Hewitt's life becomes even more unsettled after he learns that Emily, his first love and the woman with whom he once lived in a commune, is now a widow. He tries to reconnect with Emily to ask her forgiveness for a long-ago transgression and is surprised when he discovers that Emily's life isn't what it appears to be. He is torn between pursuing the love he lost and always hoped to regain and his growing attachment to the unpredictable and mysterious Jessica. As he gradually uncovers the reason for Jessica's secrecy and state of mind, Hewitt feels an even stronger connection to her but is shocked when he learns from her a secret related to a tragic loss suffered by his father decades earlier. Hewitt and Jessica are intriguing and complex protagonists, but secondary characters also shine: Walter, the disabled Vietnam veteran and loyal friend; Mary Margaret, Hewitt's strong-willed, Irish-immigrant mother; and Thomas, Hewitt's long-deceased father whose influence, along with his art, is not far from reach. Like Hewitt, the blacksmith who pounds hot iron to shape intricate works of art from his unique vision, author Jeffrey Lent uses his distinctive writer's voice to craft a painfully elegant story about love, art and second chances th

Lent's "Lost Nation" was my father's favorite book of all time, so I pre-ordered a copy of "A Peculiar Grace" for him. I was out of town when the book arrived and I came home to 5 phone messages from my father wanting to talk about the book. He had stayed up all night (on a work night) to read it and was mesmerized by the characters' depth and evolution in the course of the novel. I also read it straight through. I love Lent's lyricism in describing the natural world and his gift for interconnecting stories about multiple generations in a family. "A Peculiar Grace" is a compelling yarn and one to mull over: I keep having new insights about the characters and themes weeks after reading the book. A great book for book club.

Lent hits his groove with this contemporary novel. His characters bump along not unlike the rest of us, but they certainly aren't boring. At a few points in his other two books I thought Lent got bit heavyhanded with the detail, perhaps because he was trying hard to imagine the past. Here the language is relaxed and rhythmic, and the point of view kindly sympathetic to humans' general goofiness. The best parts for me were the funny little hits like when a friend says to the main character, "You've gone past tragic to pathetic...I'm kinda sick of you just now." This book is a great ride and a perfect summer read.

The writing is poetic and the story enthralling. I just finished reading this novel which I must say was impossible to put down - and I've done just that with quite a few of late. The narrative of this story draws you in and you just want to linger there a while. Read along and then hitting a sentence that, perhaps because of it's simplicity, hits with a force that causes you to pause and think. There are novels read for the excitement of the story line, or suspense of the mystery, but here it was that and so much more in the prose that was a pure enjoyment unto itself. If I were to compare it to another novel "Gilead" comes to mind. Stories that are a pure pleasure to read and you wish didn't have to end.

I have just finished reading A Peculiar Grace. Jeffrey Lent's writing is so refreshingly beautiful. Hewitt Pearce is one of those unforgettable fictional characters whose presence remains with you long after the book is closed. Hewitt's vulnerability, tenderness and delightful masculinity won my heart, page after page.