The first novel by the author of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning #1 New York Times bestseller All the Light We Cannot See, one of the most beautiful, wise, and compelling debuts of recent times.
David Winkler begins life in Anchorage, Alaska, a quiet boy drawn to the volatility of weather and obsessed with snow. Sometimes he sees things before they happen—a man carrying a hatbox will be hit by a bus; Winkler will fall in love with a woman in a supermarket. When David dreams that his infant daughter will drown in a flood as he tries to save her, he comes undone. He travels thousands of miles, fleeing family, home, and the future itself, to deny the dream.
On a Caribbean island, destitute, alone, and unsure if his child has survived or his wife can forgive him, David is sheltered by a couple with a daughter of their own. Ultimately it is she who will pull him back into the world, to search for the people he left behind.
Doerr's characters are full of grief and longing, but also replete with grace. His compassion for human frailty is extraordinarily moving. In luminous prose, he writes about the power and beauty of nature and about the tiny miracles that transform our lives. About Grace is heartbreaking, radiant, and astonishingly accomplished.
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Times Literary Supplement
"A remarkable novel."
Vogue
"Doerr deftly weaves a tale of one man's struggle to make peace with his life."
Karen Joy Fowler
"A stunning meditation on chance and pattern, exile and home. Gorgeous, transporting, and deeply, deeply satisfying. Equal parts science and magic (but all of it magical)."
New York Times
"There's a rapture with nature expressed in prose that sings off the page; an infinitely subtle algebra of resonance and sympathy between minds, lives, objects, light, senses, weather."
Los Angeles Times
"About Grace is an extended meditation on the tides and eddies of life itself, spun out in sentences that never fail to thrill, amaze or edify."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Truly beautiful. . . Doerr has a talent for painting vibrant, enchanting scenes."
Denver Post
"About Grace celebrates the blessings all around us, whether it's the miracle of forgiveness by our loved ones, or the miracle of nature all around us."
Monica Ali
"I loved this wonderful book—its strangeness, its obsessiveness, its beautiful sentences."
Julia Glass
"A taut, gorgeously written odyssey of heartbreak and self-forgiveness."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"This mesmerizing novel is pitch perfect . . . utterly unforgettable."
Newsday
"One of those novels that works its way into your very dreams."
Washington Post
"A beautiful and expansive novel. . . As I neared the end, I read more and more slowly, increasingly reluctant to leave this intricately imagined world behind."
