From Publishers Weekly:
Florida Grace Shepherd is another of Smith's spirited Southern women of humble background (Fair and Tender Ladies, etc.) who are destined to endure difficult and often tragic times. Instantly appealing by virtue of her distinctive narrative voice, which is iconoclastic and free from self-pity, Grace is the daughter of Virgil Shepherd, a self-styled minister who spreads the gospel in revival meetings by means of serpent handling and personal charisma. Even as a child, "Gracie" hates her father's insistence on constant prayer, poverty and the need to see God's benevolent "testing" in every hardship to which he subjects his family. As she matures, she realizes that her father is a compulsive womanizer who excuses his frequent lapses by claiming that God forgives him whenever he "backslides." Though his behavior eventually drives her mother to suicide, it takes longer for Grace herself to escape her father's psychic clutches. She is seduced by a half-brother at 14 and at 17 marries a melancholy 42-year-old preacher; she has two children and succumbs to an adulterous affair. Smith has great empathy for the poor, uneducated country people who yearn for a transcendent message to infuse their lives with spiritual meaning, and she demonstrates clearly how an aberrant individual like Virgil can attract fervent followers. She is less successful than usual in winning sympathy for her flawed heroine, however. Although she makes understandable the reasons for Grace's shallow personality and shows how a lifetime of sexual repression can trigger infidelity, Grace's abandonment of her children seems implausible, and her suffering never achieves a convincing poignancy. Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist:
Florida Grace ("Florida for the state I was born in, Grace for the grace of God" ) pours out her life story in a voice as clear and sweet as mountain water. And what a story it is: raised by her charismatic father, an itinerant, serpent-handling preacher, and her devout, long-suffering mother, Gracie harbors a secret hatred of Jesus. She yearns to live in a brick house and to have a Barbie doll instead of having to travel and to live with strangers in tents and old school buses. Her father believes that God will provide and turns a blind eye to his family's poverty and suffering. The first chance she gets, she marries the duty-bound Reverend Travis Word, but by the time she turns 33, she feels like an old woman. She eventually comes full circle at Uncle Slidell's Christian Fun Golf Course, for at hole number 10, "The First Christmas," she hears the baby Jesus cry out to her. Returning to a North Carolina cabin, the site of her few happy childhood memories, Gracie discovers she has the gift of second sight and reunites with the serpent-handling congregation her father originally founded. Popular southern writer Smith sweeps readers in with her fascinating portrayal of a bizarre, arcane religious cult; in particular, the scenes depicting religous ecstasy are mesmerizing. Franny Glass
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