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The Grace that Keeps this World is about family. It’s about a family living in the hard back country of the Adirondack Mountains, working off the land to patch together a living. It would have been easy for author Tom Bailey to make this a book full of clichés about rural America. Instead, he gives a caring portrayal of a disappearing vestige of life, the nuclear family.
It starts with Gary and Susan Hazen, who graduated from high school and got married the next day in their hometown of Lost Lake. After several years, they had their first child, a boy named Gary David. Five years later, they had Kevin, their second son. The Hazen family lived simply—never poor, never on the government dole, but they lived a tough life that was filled with attending mass and working every hour of daylight. Gary was a woodsman, skilled at harvesting trees without damaging the forest and only taking the trees that were beginning the down side of their lives. Susan stayed home but worked as hard as her husband, raising vegetables that the family ate by seasons. Together they brought up their sons to work as hard as they did. Gary Hazen was hard on his sons but compassionate towards them as well, giving them a high moral code to live by.
It’s a time of change for the Hazen family. Gary’s friend, the long-time game warden, has retired to Florida with his wife, only to be replaced by a rookie who’s a stickler for the rules. His youngest son has fallen in love with an upper-class granola girl at the local college and is moving away with her at the end of the semester. His oldest son has taken a lover, keeping a secret to avoid his father’s disapproval. The coming deer season, so important to the family surviving the winter, may be the last for the three Hazen men.
All of the characters are more than they seem on the surface. Their years of living so closely together have given them insights into each other that are revealed to the reader as the voices of each chapter slowly tell the story of the Hazen family. Not a sentence is wasted, and even the chapters that seem to have nothing to do with the central characters tell us something about them. Sometimes it just takes a few pages for us to realize what we’re being shown.
From the opening chapter, the reader knows that a tragedy related to the hunt is coming. When it happens, the entire town is pulled into it, as small towns always are. The reader is stunned by the tragedy as well—but is even more stunned by the events after it. Again, Bailey shows the resiliency and strong bonds of small communities.
This is a well-written book with a satisfying ending. Nothing that happens ever feels forced or contrite. Tom Bailey has given us an excellent first novel. If his next is on the same level, then we can look forward to years of good reading from him.
