Grace

I thought Grace was a hard book to get into until about chapter four. Then I really enjoyed until the end. I don't understand or like how she was obsessed with one guy through the whole book and then goes off and marries another man in the end. There just wasn't enough conclusion in this book. Otherwise the writing is well done. You really get to know each character because Jane wrote in third person. Jane has a unique writing style that is hard to get used to at first, but after a while is enjoyable.

It's been several years since the reading world was "graced" with a work by Jane Roberts Wood. But if we had to wait, this was a wonderful reward for our patience. Grace, the novel, is captivating and only makes me hope that Ms. Wood doesn't make us wait for another work.

"Grace" follows the lives of four households living on the same block in the small Texas town of Cold Springs during the final years of World WarII. Grace Gillian, english teacher at the local high school, sparks passion for learning and exploration in her students. She presence is unsettling for the town, married later, only to have her husband abandon her, head filled with dreams and impractical things. This woman is a catalyst of sorts in the other households. John Appleby, enlisting in the service after his wife's death, looks to her with confusion and longing. Young Bobby Moore V, drawn by the passion Grace displays as his teacher, and her unselfconscious beauty. His home has currents of its own, his yankee mother snubbed( and not at all bothered)by local woman, befriends the family maid, struggles with the interference of family in her daughter's life. Bobby is drawn to Dixie baldridge, a young beauty with a troubled family life. Her father drinks and her mother is scarred by past trauma that has left her unable to cope. The US is drawn into the war and local young men leave the comforting confines of Cold Springs, life is turned upside down. While this book seems to wander a bit,it is a wonderful book that captures the upheavel in small town life that marked the mid 1940s. The realization that change would impose itself upon life, no matter how careful one was. Each family must face its own and intertwined challenges,closing the doors on hurts and refinding love and figuring out where they fit in Cold Springs

In a departure from her gentle Texas triology, Ms. Woods takes the reader on a passionate and lusty exploration of a sleepy little East Texas town and the final year of WWII. In the four homes on a single block, every household is an entirely different world of mannerisms, of history, of hopes and of dreams. This glimpse into the past provides more than just insight into the times, but also into the thoughts and minds of the individual people and truly a feeling of being there. My only disappointment? That there wasn't a CD in the back cover of the book, with a collection of the music that floats through this memorable story.

In 1944 in Cold Springs, Texas, thirty-eight-year-old English teacher Grace Gillian does not understand the male of the species, at least those who are not on the front. They seem to admire her yet they avoid her as if she has a contagious disease. Her spouse simply left her without a word of explanation. Her widower neighbor shared a glorious evening with her, but never followed up with even a visit. Teenager Bobby Moore, who wants to join the army, and his father both have desired Grace, but try to hide those feelings especially from the senior's wacky Yankee spouse. Even a sergeant she meets on a train heading east finds he cannot resist the lure of Grace.Perhaps, the males find the amazing teacher just a bit too flaky for them almost as if she is a flame and they are moths. She daringly reads poetry to her students. Who knows what other wild ideas she might unleash on an unsuspecting man? As the war draws closer to an end, which lucky male will earn Grace's love?GRACE is a fabulous period piece that brings home life in a small Texas town during World War II. Though the story line centers on Grace, it contains several intriguing subplots that allow the audience a better understanding of her admirers and their need for distance. The key cast members are fully developed either through their respective relationship with Grace or with their own family members. Still, this is Grace's novel and she shines throughout just as much as author Jane Roberts Wood does.Harriet Klausner