Grace is told from three alternating points of view: Catherine Finley; her father, Douglas Finley; and Hal Doyle, Catherine’s colleague at the College. Storytelling asks each character to rethink collective and personal memories. As it does, the past reshapes the present.
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Catherine Finley
Hal Doyle
Douglas Finley
Excerpts from Chapter Four
This chapter references Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
Catherine opened her novel and lost herself in the story. Virginia Woolf wading into the river and drowning herself. Laura Brown, a depressed housewife reading Mrs. Dalloway in sterile 1949 Los Angeles, struggling to live amid thoughts about death. Clarissa Vaughan, a modern day Mrs. Dalloway wading into memory as she tries to make sense of her life at the end of the twentieth century. Had her mother’s story been like this? Had she struggled to find those moments of happiness when all Catherine saw was her mother’s suicide attempts?
After reading a few more pages, Catherine realized the beach was filling up around her. She saw people she knew who lived in Spring Lake year-round, and then there were the tourists struggling with umbrellas, coolers, and buckets and shovels. They looked like characters in a cartoon trying to look relaxed in a foreign country.
Excerpts from Chapter Eight
This chapter references Michael Cunningham’s The Hours
Another early night, Catherine thought, as she watched fearfully as her father climbed the steps. She picked up her copy of The Hours and went into the sunroom. Curled up on the couch, she finished the novel. The modern-day Mrs. Dalloway looking for the moment of happiness. That moment at nineteen… kissing Richard after the drunken night… was that the moment of happiness?
What was that moment for her father? Did he want to tell her? Did she want to know? The trip to Ireland with Peter, so many moments, then, filled with laughter, conversation. Was that her moment of happiness, one she couldn’t sustain?
Why is it so hard to find what makes us happy? Her mother always insisted that it was about finding the right man. Was this because she never did herself? Was she happy when she first married Catherine’s father? He was making a lot of money, but did she feel left behind when her father decided to go to seminary and become an Episcopal priest? The arguments. Her mother ridiculing her father’s passion for protesting the war, helping blacks get registered to vote. Why was he unable to explain to her mother why this was so important to him? Laying the book aside, Catherine curled up on the sofa and fell asleep, smelling the salt air and hearing the gentle surf just blocks away.
Excerpts from Chapter Eleven
This chapter references Barak Obama’s Dreams from My Father
They finished their drinks and headed back to the room. While Judy showered, Catherine started Dreams from My Father. So young to be writing an autobiography, she thought. In the preface to the new edition, he reflects back on the last ten years. During this time, Obama loses his mother to cancer. If he had known his mother would die, he wonders if he would have written a different book, one focused on his mother rather than on his absent father. His mother had been the constant in his life. Hmm. Was Catherine making the same mistake? Her absent mother, distant because of alcohol and valium. Why chase that ghost when her father has been her constant and still is today?