For the Love of Grace

Grace Ainsworth may be 88 years old, but she’s not dead yet…and she has stories to tell. Her fellow residents at The Gardens, an upscale, retirement facility, have lived full lives as well, although their tales, as with ancients everywhere, sadly, have been locked tight in untapped memories. For the Love of Grace offers the reader a peek inside the minds of Mildred, Maude, Henry, and Grace, whose past experiences-brash, heartrending, and colorful-have molded their personalities and commanded behaviors perhaps even they do not comprehend. They are not alone, for The Gardens is home to myriad vibrant souls interacting within a fixed and insulated world. Brazen impropriety, unfathomable faith, profound memory, and the clutches of dementia are the selective lifeblood of the elders there and are integral elements to the narrative. But who cares? one might ask. Should not all of us? For the past is a teacher, and if we do not listen, personal histories and treasures of the past will be lost forever.