My great-grandmother lived a life of joy, tragedy, love, and adventure from the prairies of Iowa to the foothills of the Rockies. AN AWFUL GRACE, a historical fiction, is a tapestry woven with strands of my Great-Grandmother's memoir, her recipes, and my imagination. This is a story of a woman's courage, tenacity, and her growth in learning to give and to receive love she never expected to find. Readers have compared AN AWFUL GRACE to Ivan Doig's WHISTLING SEASON, and Patricia MacLaughlan's SARAH PLAIN AND TALL. An Awful Grace "He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, come wisdom through the awful grace of God." Aeschylus