Press for Nancy J. Allen and her newly released book Grace: A Novel.

About the Book
Read an Excerpt
Reading Group Guide
Author Q&A
Themes in Grace
Order the Book

Grace Book Launch Party
Book Reading, Discussion and Q+A
Watch Now

Featured on Chestnut Hill Local
Wyndmoor author’s timely novel of college scandals

Featured on BooksbyWomen.org
Nancy Allen:  On Writing and Researching Grace

Featured on Hasty Book List
June Books to Read | Author Interview

Reviews

“Nancy Allen’s ability to probe the foundations of relationships, secrets, past influences, and the legacy of abuse lends a realistic tone and perspective to a story that many women will readily relate to.”
—Midwest Book Review  | Read the full review (pdf)

“So often, those who experience sexual harassment or assault can feel as if they are voiceless. … Catherine’s power and outspokenness in the face of the harassment is representative of the voice of women in the world. 

“Allen’s novel is critical of hierarchies and campus politics, demanding a restructure or even a complete destruction of current power dynamics. In spite of this criticism, Allen reminds us that there is beauty and love in the world, all-be-it much more complex and messier than in the movies.”
—Independent Book Review | Read the full review (pdf)

“Nancy Allen’s warm and evocative novel Grace explores the deceptions—of others, and of the self—that haunt so many human relationships. Both Catherine, the novel’s central character, and her aging father Douglas are in painful retreat from past loves and past mistakes. Even Catherine’s immersion in her career as an academic dean at fictional Franklin College, an institution wracked by its own secrets and scandals, offers no escape. But Allen’s loving depictions of home and place (particularly Douglas’s Victorian home on the New Jersey shore), and of Catherine and Douglas’s shared love of literature (from Virginia Woolf and Michael Cunningham to the poetry of Rilke and Yeats), offer pleasure and solace to characters and reader alike. Catherine, Douglas, and other characters whose lives are intimately bound with theirs carry on, sustained by devotion to their work and, through that work, to literature, justice, faith, and love.”
—Joyce Hinnefeld, author of Tell Me Everything, In Hovering Flight, Stranger Here Below, and The Beauty of Their Youth

“Grace is both a woman’s name and a mysterious force that activates our best selves. Nancy Allen’s tender, aptly-titled novel probes the limits of idealism in the face of bitterness and aggression, while exposing how choices made in adversity affect the next generation. If you’ve ever been animated by a passion to change the world for the better, struggled to protect yourself and others from actions of those more powerful; if you’ve experienced moments of doubt and uncertainty; if you’ve mourned the loss of a parent or been haunted by family secrets, you will vibrate to the characters and their struggles. By illuminating their paths, Allen challenges us to consider how we may best acquit ourselves in a broken world.” 
—Alison Hicks, Founder & Director, Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio and author of You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss

“This moving saga is powered both by a father’s revelations and a daughter’s determination to escape sexual harassment in the workplace, and will be welcomed by women who may see in Catherine some of their own struggles and conflicts.”
—Recommended Reading – Donovan’s Bookshelf | Read the full review