Named a New York Times Best Book of the Year, 2016. For a slave in the 1840s South, life on the run can be just as dangerous as life under a sadistic Massa. That’s what fifteen-year-old Naomi learns after she escapes the brutal confines of life on an Alabama plantation and takes refuge in a Georgia brothel run by a gun-toting Jewish madam named Cynthia. Amidst a revolving door of gamblers and prostitutes, Naomi falls into a love affair with a smooth-talking white man named Jeremy. The product of their union is Josey, whose white skin and blond hair mark her as different from the others on the plantation. Having been taken in as an infant by a free slave named Charles, Josey has never known her mother, who was murdered at her birth. Josey soon becomes caught in the tide of history when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reaches her and a day of supposed freedom turns into one of unfathomable violence that will define Josey—and her lost mother—for years to come. Grace is a sweeping, intergenerational saga featuring a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history. It is a universal story of freedom, love, and motherhood, told in a dazzling and original voice set against a rich and transporting historical backdrop. “With her debut novel, Grace , Natashia Deón has announced herself beautifully and distinctively. Her emotional range spans several octaves. She writes with her nerves, generating terrific suspense. And her style is so visual it plays tricks on the imagination — did I just watch that scene? Or did I read it? Ms. Deón is not merely another new author to watch. She has delivered something whole, and to be reckoned with, right now… It's Ms. Deón's real and rare ability to make reading a felt, almost physical experience — of terror, rage, identification, sorrow. Ms. Deón is a graphic and unsparing storyteller… In Grace , Ms. Deón explores, with psychological acuity and absolutely no mercy, what the institution did to slave women — specifically, how it deprived them of the most basic chance to love, delight in and protect their own children.” —Jennifer Senior, New York Times “Gripping and deeply affecting, Grace is an examination of injustice, violence, love, legacies, and survival.” — Buzzfeed “[An] immersive tale… You'll believe every word.” — People “[A] haunting portrait of slavery, love and violence.” — Newsday “We are looking forward to Grace because it's a multigenerational story about strong women in one of the darkest eras of American history.” — Redbook “Put this one on your summer saga reading list.” — KQED Arts “This book is well worth any emotional turmoil it puts you through––especially at this particular moment in our country's history.” — PureWow , Book Club Pick “ Grace is a sweeping, intergenerational saga featuring a group of outcast women during one of the most compelling eras in American history. It is a universal story of freedom, love, and motherhood, told in a dazzling and original voice set against a rich and transporting historical backdrop.” — Book Riot “In vivid, haunting prose, Déon looks at one such line of women—mother, daughter, granddaughter—to tell the stories that must be told. A profound work of heart and grace.” — The Root “Deon's novel is timely; she captures the eerily familiar violence of the slavery era, and the ways in which the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation turn hollow.” — Lithub “Initially what sets Grace apart is aesthetic: Naomi tells her own story, and witnesses Josey's, as a ghost. What stuck with me about this novel, though, is its questioning of what redemption and justice would mean in this context. Naomi finds resolution, but this remains an unsettled and unsettling, literally haunted, debut.” —The Globe and Mail “If the expression “natural–born storyteller” hasn't yet gone to the glue factory, then [this novel] take[s] the nag out for a fresh canter…. Still, once you settle into [this] novel, a sign takes shape overhead: Quiet Please. People Reading… [R]ight from these first few pages, Deón demonstrates a gift for terror by telegraph… overall the suspense doubles, marvelously.” — Brooklyn Rail “Deón's powerful debut is a moving, mystical family saga . . . The book provides penetrating insight into how confusing, violent, and treacherous life remained in the South after the Emancipation Proclamation, and how little life improved for freed slaves, even after the war. The omnipresences of Naomi's ghost renders the story wide–angled, vast, and magical. Deón is a writer of great talent, using lyrical language and convincing, unobtrusive dialect to build portraits of each tragic individual as the sprawling story moves to its redemptive end.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review “There are moments of love in this harsh, affecting first novel, but the story mostly conveys the taking of personal freedom and human dignity. The presence of the apparition is fan