Grace

In one sentence: A young man carries everything alone for fourteen years until the world names what he could never say himself — and the people who were quietly there for all of it turn out to have been enough.

Genre: High concept, realistic fiction
Rights available: World English / Translation / Film & TV
Audience: New Adult, Adult.
Word count: 97,000 approx
Timeline: September 1998 — January 2002
Setting: UNB Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada (with Alberta and Nova Scotia sequences)
Narrative Perspective: Matthew narrates in first person, present tense

Comparables

"A Little Life" (Yanagihara), "The Stone Angel" (Laurence), "The Catcher in the Rye" (Salinger)

Synopsis

“Grace” is a literary novel set at the University of New Brunswick between 1998 and 2002. It is narrated in first-person present tense by Matthew Callaghan, a twenty-year-old CS student from northern Alberta who carries a secret so deeply suppressed he does not know he is carrying it. Over this four-part book — three and a half years of university, one summer of tree-planting in Nova Scotia, one summer of grief in Alberta — Matthew orbits Grace Harrison, the Presbyterian minister's daughter who runs a student ministry at UNB and who asks God things and waits for answers. He cannot stop approaching her. He cannot fully arrive. Her father, Frank Harrison, bails Matthew out of jail at 2am without asking why. Neither of them ever mentions it again. Amidst the central trauma, the sprawling ensemble cast adds a quiet, human texture to the margins—like the tentative, almost-romance between Jess and Ben, weaving his Indigenous heritage naturally into the broader world

Teaser

I jolt awake to the cell door clanking open.
"Time to get lost, kid."
"What."
"You're out. Sign some papers."
I follow him, still half asleep, to a room where my things are laid out—watch, wallet, key, the Subway stamp card in a small bag. I get my belt and shoes back on and pocket everything.
He leads me to the front. There's a man there. He's wearing a flimsy unzipped jacket over a wool sweater—grey, frayed at the cuffs, with small holes that develop over years of wear and tear. His grey hair is short and uncombed. His eyes are tired but alert. He looks at me. Patient.
An officer slides a paper across the desk. The man signs it with a sigh and nothing dramatic, just the quiet sound of 3am, and he slides it back.
"Thanks, Frank."
I don't know a Frank. Maybe someone Jess called.
He folds the paper handed to him and nods for me to follow. I do. Behind us one of the officers calls out. "Drive safe, Reverend."
I stop walking for half a step. Reverend. I realize this is Grace's father. The yard-work sweater, the grey hair, the patience, none of it triggered anything. But that word does. My chest does something quick. I keep walking.
He holds the passenger door open for me without a word. I get in because that's what you do. He closes the door and I watch him walk around the front of the Cavalier. He gets in, starts the engine, and we move.
We drive past Beaverbrook Street. Away from campus. My heart starts doing what it does. I look at his hands on the wheel. His knuckles are white. He's not as composed as he appears.
Grace told me they live downtown. He's driving us away from downtown. Away from campus. The city lights thinning, the road darker. I don't know where we're going and I don't ask because I can't find the words and because some part of me is running calculations, ways to get out of where this could lead.
Two or three minutes outside the city he pulls off onto a gravel area at the edge of a trail—running and cycling in summer, empty now. He stops the car, shifts into park, leaves the engine running. The heater is finally doing something. Neither of us speaks.
He puts his hands in his lap. Looks straight out through the windshield at the dark road and the dark trees and whatever's beyond them.
"My daughter has a way of seeing things in people that most people miss." He pauses. "I’ve learned not to argue with it. Don't make me regret getting out of bed." Another pause. "For whatever reason, she thinks you're worth it."
He doesn't look at me. He just says it to the windshield and lets it sit there. I don't have a response. I'm not sure I could speak right now if I needed to. I look at the dashboard, the heater vent, his hands in his lap. Someone said that about me. Someone got out of bed at 2am and drove to a police station and signed a paper and drove out of the city in a yard-work sweater and said that.
He shifts back into drive. We turn toward Fredericton.