The Matter of Grace

This novel is about a woman who tries to conceal her eating disorder and her very close friends that basically allow her to do so for quite a long time.In Oakland, Grace and 3 of her local swim club buddies make a strong friendship over the years. Nearly every day they see each other and share each other's sorrows and happiness. In the beginning of their friendship Grace divulges a story of surviving cancer. When her weight begins to plummet and she appears to be a walking cadaver, she reluctantly admits the cancer is raging nearly out of control. Her friends, without question, accept her story. There is little reason not to, until, as time goes on, things just do not seem to make sense.However, it is a subject which is difficult to deal with. Each of the other women have their own problems, some worse than the other. While trying to do the best they can with their problems (divorce, pregnancy, etc) the matter of Grace becomes more convoluted.In truth, such a problem can get pretty complicated before it is dealt with. Finally accepting warnings from others that Grace may be suffering from an eating disorder, the group of women plan an intervention. Without a solid structure, commitment and professional intervention, the attempt falls apart, leaving the group impotent to furthur confrontation.The reality of Grace is that the disease is a process that continues unmercifully. It is also understood that eating disorder patients may also have drug, alcohol and self-mutilation addictions. The matter of Grace is beyond this clique of 4. The matter of Grace is beyond Grace.I welcome and applaud the efforts of Jessica Barksdale Inclan to bring forth the issue of eating disorders. As a nurse and personally involved with a close relative with the eating disorder, I appreciate any and all efforts to educate the public about this problem. The book holds the worthy NAL accent and will enhance the understanding of eating disorders, recognition and treatment. It is up to all of us not to turn away and explore the possiblility of eating disorders. We may not be able to cure, but we can understand, accept , love and be supportive for those that suffer in the same problems such as the matter of Grace.

Felice, Stella, Helen and Grace are four women who have been friends for about 7 years. Each week they gather and meet at a local swimming club where they involve themselves in conversation while their children learn to swim. Ms. Barksdale Inclan allows us a look at the closely intertwined friendship these four women share. Women who are struggling with motherhood, friendship, being a wife and the adversity that comes with each of these roles. The writing is so vividly clear that you feel as though you are the fifth friend in this group of four women silently listening to their conversations from a lounge chair at the side of the pool. Each of these women brings to the story a peek into their lives of the troubles and feelings they deal with on a day to day basis. Lives that many of us who are married and have friends can relate to. Their struggles are real, wrought with emotion and written with such clarity that you can feel, understand and appreciate the internal turmoil these women deal with. From a failed marriage, to a wandering eye to a serious illness. When Grace becomes ill the women gather to help their friend with her illness. Along this journey of comfort and compassion they each discover something about themselves and their lives. What they discover about Grace, is that you don't always know people, even your closest friends, as well as you think you do. The bond of friendship and motherhood is a strong and powerful thread throughout this novel.Ms. Inclan has a true gift for writing that is rare to find. She writes with such clarity and emotion and is able to convey to and invoke in the reader, a feeling and sense of unity. Of being in the story with the characters and feeling as though you are experiencing their lives, their emotions, their hopes, their dreams, their friendship and the bond between them. The story draws you in from the beginning and keeps you warmly embraced until the end.

In her second novel, the Matter of Grace, Jessica Barksdale Inclan again draws us into contemporary California suburbia, where daily life is emotionally complicated despite outward appearances for four women who find themselves striving (often struggling) to be good mothers, wives and friends while reflecting on and acceppting where childhood-family influences and choices have lead them. Through well-developed characters, Inclan offers compassionate, intricate and deep insight into women's introspective look at marriage, sex, motherhood, intellectual and spiritual fulfillment, friendship and one's own childhood -- an extensive list of issues, but all she covers well.The Matter of Grace focuses on the gift of friendship four women share, a friendship that started simply as mothers talking daily by the community poolside while their children swam. The bond these women develop through friendship -- unconditional love and support they don't feel elsewhere, even in marriage -- is revealed and then challenged in a story centered around Grace's new struggle with cancer. The plot thickens with the mystery and depth of Grace's sickness. We learn about the fragility of a person who can't feel love and accepted because she can't love herself. And we are forced to consider how one's childhood family life and mother relationship affect her self-image, decision making, and abilities throughout life, even in abilities to mother her own child. As Grace's friends try to help her through illness they are forced to examine their own lives.Published by New American Library (NAL), a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., The Matter of Grace has been named a NAL Accent novel -- a label awarded to new women's literature focused on "subjects close to a woman's heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world." NAL Accent novels include, at the close of each story, interviews with the author on what she hoped to convey through her writing and conversation guides intended to enrich the reading experience as well as encourage women to discuss issues together.