Moments Of Glad Grace: A Memoir

(Paperback)

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Description

'As a writer, Wearingis all luscious texture and running narrative.' The Globe and Mail

Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir of aging, familial love, and the hunt for roots and belonging. The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest any at all in genealogy.

Very quickly, the father-daughter pilgrimage becomes more comical than fruitful, more of a bittersweet adventure than a studious mission. And rather than rigorous genealogy, their explorations move into the realm of family and forgiveness, the primal search for identity and belonging, and questions about responsibility to our ancestors and the extent to which we are shaped by the people who came before us.

Though continually bursting with humour, Moments of Glad Graceultimately becomes a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents, the small moments we share, and the gifts of transcendence we might find there.

Reviews

"Moments of Glad Grace is an endearing delight." -- Shelf Awareness
"A richly layered journey, charmingly told." -- Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything
"Dancing between hilarity and the poignancy of a last sojourn with her father, Alison Wearing once again reveals herself as a sharp and tender observer of this mortal coil we call life. Moments of Glad Grace is a journey you won't want to miss." -- Merilyn Simonds, author of Refuge
"This is a well written book that celebrates love and maturity, wisdom and forgiveness, and the hard earned peace that occurs when you have the courage to pass through heartfelt honesty to the other side of tragedy, loss and sorrow. Highly recommended." -- Vancouver Sun
"This is a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence. It's about a daughter and her ageing father, it's about genealogy and identity, it's about Ireland, but actually it's about how we love the ones we love. Moments of Glad Grace is a travelogue of the heart. It's a road you'll want to travel." -- Yann Martel, #1 bestselling author of Life of Pi

Author Bio

Alison Wearing is the bestselling author of Confessions of a Fairys Daughter, an Indigo Top 50 pick shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Prize and longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. She teaches, performs solo multimedia plays, and leads writing workshops internationally.