Grace Jensen survived a horrific fire at age 15. The flames changed her: badly scarred in body and mind, Grace developed an ability to feel other people’s pain. Unable to bear human touch, she has made a small life for herself in Northern California, living with her hoarder mother, tending wounded animals, and falling a little in love with her former doctor. Her safe world explodes when the magnetic Marly Kennet reappears in town; Grace falls right back into the dynamic of their complicated friendship. Marly is the holder of many secrets, including one that has haunted Grace for over a decade: what really happened the night of the fire? When Marly exhorts Grace to join her in Las Vegas, to make up for the years they have been lost to each other, Grace takes a leap of faith and goes. Although Marly is not entirely honest about her intentions, neither woman anticipates that enlarging Grace’s world will magnify her ability to sense the suffering of others—or that she will begin to heal wounds by swallowing her own pain and laying her hands on the afflicted. This gift soon turns darker when the truth of Marly’s life—and the real reason she ended her friendship with Grace—pushes the boundaries of loyalty and exposes both women to danger.
Author
Jordan E. Rosenfeld is an author, editor, and freelance writer. She is the author of WOMEN IN RED, NIGHT ORACLE, FORGED IN GRACE, as well as the writing guides: How to Write a Page Turner, Writing the Intimate Character, Writing Deep Scenes, A Writer's Guide to Persistence, Make A Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time, which is now in its second edition, and "Write Free: Attracting the Creative Life" with Rebecca Lawton. Her essays & articles have appeared in: The Atlantic, GOOD, DAME Magazine, Mental Floss, Modern Loss, New York Times, New York Magazine, The Rumpus, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, Scientific American, Writer's Digest, The Writer and more. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and a BA from the Hutchins School at Sonoma State University. Her essays and stories have appeared in literary journals such as the Blue Moon Review, Night Train, the Pedastal Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Opium, LitPot, Smokelong Quarterly, Spoiled Ink, the Summerset Review, Void Magazine, Zaum and in literary anthologies. Her fiction has also been performed by actors as part of the Page on Stage project in Santa Rosa. For three years, Jordan hosted the literary radio program Word by Word: Conversations with Writers, which received an NEA Chairman’s grant for literary projects in 2005, on NPR-affiliate KRCB radio. She interviewed authors such as T.C. Boyle, Aimee Bender, Louise Erdrich, and Mary Gaitskill.
