Full of Grace
by Dorothea Benton Frank
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dorothea Benton FrankEdition: Paperback
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-07-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Avon A
Book Reviews of Full of Grace
Book Review: Improbable on Several Levels
Summary: 2 Stars
I liked Michael's miracle--who wouldn't?--when he visited the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. However, almost everything else about the book flew in the face of credibility. Grace, the heroine, is the daughter of a gaudily Catholic family transplanted to the South--Benton always sets at least part of her books in the Low Country--who is an agnostic like her live-in love, Michael. She is ashamed of her family's excesses and resentful that they do not accept Michael. Why? He is Irish Catholic, not Italian--horrors--and lapsed at that. More, he is a scientist involved in stem cell research. Yet off she goes at every beck and call to spend every holiday with her family without Michael, never invited, even when he is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. First, the likelihood that she who no longer believed in the Church would have wound up with another Catholic is a stretch. Were there only Catholics she ever met? More, is her family so insular the only people they consider Catholic are Italian? Yes, but pretty unsympathetic. The more so when the resolution of the book is her acceptance of her family's point of view, as long as Michael is brought into the fold because of Michael's miraculous cure. This reader watched a family member die of brain cancer, and knew what the symptoms were from their first mention. Wouldn't it be lovely if Stage 4 brain cancer COULD be cured--though it is considered always terminal? [Why I liked the cure by the Virgin of Guadalupe, it would be great to think it possible.] But when the whole book is set up to justify the prejudice of the Russo family against everybody but people exactly like themselves, her buying into their narrow attitude was not a happy resolution for me. Despite her many-page descriptions of food and decor on festive occasions, more than I have ever seen by any other published author; her readers presumably aren't bored. Her books are virtually always the same book written over again with different names and very slightly different problems, but at least here she wrote something different in terms of plot and character, to her credit. I find myself reading them because in our small community library so many have been donated, maybe by a relative, but I do question Pat Conroy's endorsement of Benton. She is okay, but not on a level with Conroy. It is perhaps unfair to expect her to be. In this case, I think she went off the deep end in terms of credibility and acceptance of prejudice.
Summary of Full of Grace
The move from New Jersey to Hilton Head, South Carolina, wasn't easy for the Russo family?difficult enough for Big Al and Connie, but even harder for their daughter Maria Graziella, who insists on being called Grace. At thirty-one and still, shockingly, unmarried, Grace has scandalized her staunchly traditional Italian family by moving in with her boyfriend Michael?who, though a truly great guy, is agnostic, commitment-phobic, a scientist, and (horror of horrors) Irish!
Grace adores her parents even though they drive her crazy?and she knows they'd love Michael if they got to know him, but Big Al won't let him into their house. And so the stage is set for a major showdown?which, along with a devastating, unexpected crisis and, perhaps, a miracle or two, just might change Grace's outlook on love, family, and her new life in the new South.
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