Sufficient Grace

When you read this book, you try to think of another writer for comparison...and when you get that list going, it contains just a few names, those authors whose work stuck in your head - and your heart. Then you might wonder if Darnell isn't better at it than the rest you've read - and this is her first novel! The flow of language and plot is so natural, but masterful; the connection with the spiritual world can't be taught in a writing workshop. The kinship with the characters - Darnell's and the reader's - must have been pre-destined in some unearthly place because now I know these people as well as Darnell does! It has been several weeks since I finished SUFFICIENT GRACE; I think about the story almost every day.

This story is so richly told through characters so real I wonder what they are doing today - this minute - because surely they live on. After finishing this book I have been amazed by the number of times I am reminded that life's challenges can be met with sufficient grace. Read this book not only for its exquisite language, moving story and memorable characters, but for the lessons that linger.

Lee Smith, Kaye Gibbons, and Alan Gurganus move over and make room for Darnell at the notable Southern writer's table. Darnell has crafted a rich story about how family relationships break, mend, bend, grow and deepen. Two families, one white and one black, are drawn together by one woman's mental illness, which is approached with compassion, humor, frustration and acceptance. The characters are beautifully drawn and walk off the page into your living room and into your heart. Mama Toot, in particular is unforgettable. Lots of the action and relationship building happens around food - tables laden with fried pies, pound cakes, biscuits, shelves full of home canned fruits and vegetables, and doughnuts. Darnell's prose is delicious..I could eat it with a spoon! This book feeds the soul..I did not want it to end! I will be eagerly awaiting Darnell's next book!

From The National Alliance on Mental Illness Newsletter: by Bob Carolla "Sufficient Grace, by Darnell Arnoult, is a Southern novel that explores themes of faith, family, love, and redemption. It's sensitive, at times humorous. It's also about schizophrenia, inspired by the mother of the author. The book opens with Gracie Holloman drawing a life-size picture of Jesus on the walls of her house to watch over the family she is about to leave -- in response to commands from spiritual voices. She wanders and is discovered miles away -- mute and incapacitated -- by two women. No one sees her as mentally ill. The only doctor in town who still makes house calls confirms she has no physical injury. "She may have a condition not so readily diagnosed," he observes. In fact, the words "mental illness" do not appear until page 140 of the book. "Schizophrenia" not until page 153. Gracie emerges as a character without labels, introduced without presumption. The lives of two families--one white, one black--end up being profoundly affected by Gracie's illness. Two worlds collide and family ties are redrawn. Compassion transforms an elderly widow. An abandoned husband finds a second chance at love. A daughter learns to accept her mother's illness. And Gracie's genius as a painter is revealed. But first, there are difficult moments. "How many crazy people have come to the ER?" Gracie's daughter wonders after learning her mother's diagnosis. "How many mothers and daughters? How many husbands and wives? How many mothers and children? How many people adrift and separating, trying to hold on to each other, the distance between them all constantly growing wider and wider? How many of them laugh to the point of tears as the seam between them, the thing holding them together, rips open?" "Is there a history of mental illness in the family," Gracie's doctor asks her husband. "Her daddy shot hisself. I guess that requires a certain amount of crazy." "Has she ever been hospitalized?" "There was this one time when she was in college. She told me about it before we were married, but she never talked about it after that...My wife has always listened to her own drummer. But she's never been what you'd call depressed. Just different. Always looking at things from a different angle." Mythology and religion play important roles in the novel as "cornerstones" in the way Gracie sees the world. Cooking gives it additional flavor. One reviewer calls the book "southern story-telling at its finest." Another describes it as "a hymn of praise to the possibility that wells in the shadows, the promise that waits within the most broken among us, and the power of love in all its infinite variety."

This book is a jewell. Remarkable read for a first time author. It is a joy to read a book by someone who has such a command of the language.