Grace Period

Baker finished her PhD and imagined she would end up on the tenure-track, but the career she'd trained for was no longer sustainable. GRACE PERIOD contains the essays she wrote to make sense of how her career went awry. She documents her transition out of academia and the rebuilding of a life beyond what she had prepared for.

Seeking freedom, love, and easy money, Abel Adams discovers a dark world of delusion, drugs, and self-destruction. His journey leads him through a labyrinth of crime, cults, and incarceration. Will Abel find deliverance before time runs out?

The author recounts her childhood in late-nineteenth-century Nebraska, describes her adult life on a ranch, and discusses her lifelong interest in making quilts

From a review of Listeners at the Breathing Place: [Miranda's] "best is breathtaking. Beyond the words, whatever is is light. A poet who can make us know, with this intensity, what we may do when words reach into silence, even the silences between the stars, has begun to tell us of the place for love. Certainly we can want no better."--Michael Heffernan, Poetry

"Grace Period is a novel about living with serious illness. Set in the cultural and natural riches of Sacramento and California's Central Valley, it is the story of two divorced, middle-aged cancer survivors, Marty Martinez and Miranda Mossi, who fall in love and resolve to make the most of whatever remains of their lives." "The story begins when Mexican American journalist Marty thinks his life can't get any worse: his beloved son has died of AIDS, his wife has divorced him and joined a cult, his daughter blames him for the disintegration of her parents' marriage, and he is estranged from his brothers and sisters. Then a chance medical examination reveals that he has prostate cancer." "Marty faces his bewildering new role as a cancer patient with awkward grit and touching desperation. He copes with fear and the painful, sometimes embarrassing, treatment of his disease, but instead of winding down his life he finds fresh purpose. He renews his faith in a Catholic Church as troubled as he is, and he meets Miranda, another cancer survivor, and falls in love. He brings new intensity to his newspaper career as he investigates far-reaching political scandals and pedophile priests. And he finds the courage to face his siblings and his angry daughter and to reunite the family."--BOOK JACKET.

Grace Period is filled with faith, imagination, and whimsy grounded in everyday experience. This is poetry that takes us on a journey through creation in touch with the Creator. Returning to the most fundamental pleasures of life, we take part in baking bread, celebrating new births, and walking in the woods. From repentance to restoral and through some of the difficulties in between, these are poems that ultimately lead to joy and celebration. Grace Period moves us to that place where we are “party to miracles, always loved, never alone”.

In a crisis, we need help and hope from God's Word. That's when He will freely give us His grace and meet our needs . This 30 day devotional is what the Lord showed me after my husband almost died from a stroke and our whole world changed.

How does an independent, feisty lesbian adjust to both her suddenly widowed and newly retired life? How can she survive the loss of the spouse who statistically should have survived her?