A gentle yet unflinching look at how we find our way home. A woman returns to her West Virginia roots to resolve the ghosts of her childhood. In the tradition of Rebecca Wells, Sue Monk Kidd, Olive Ann Burns, and Dorothy Allison. TENDER GRACES by Kathryn Magendie is strong literary women s fiction written with exquisite style. The death of her troubled mother and memories of her abused grandmother lure a young woman back to the Appalachian hollow where she was born. Virginia Kate, the daughter of a beautiful mountain wild-child and a slick, Shakespeare-quoting salesman, relives her turbulent childhood and the pain of her mother s betrayals. Haunted by ghosts and buried family secrets, Virginia Kate struggles to reconcile three generations of her family s lost innocence.

In this second book of Kathryn Magendie's much-praised series about the journey of a woman dealing with the ghosts of a dysfunctional family, Virginia Kate Carey seeks the loving commitment that eluded her in Tender Graces. "Vee" is idealistic and naive despite the witness she has served to the fractured heritage of her parents' and grandmother's dreams. Vee continues her journey toward wisdom, building small bridges over the chasms of hurt and longing. The inspiration of hope lingers in her. Tender Graces, and now, Secret Graces, explores three women's lives: Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, and passes through the fulcrum of Virginia Kate's emerging life as a lover and mother and storyteller, chronicling the heart ache and hope of her family and herself.

Virginia Kate's journey of understanding and forgiveness brings her back to the moment that changed her family's fate forever . . . "Grandma Faith calls to me to her ending that she says is her beginning. I must start with her, for she is the beginning of Momma who is the beginning of me who tells the stories-the stories are made real by the telling. The others will follow. 'Round we go. The mommas, the daughters, the children. They all wait for the releasing. The women of the ages. The little girls who lost their way and then were found. The mommas who wanted and those who did not. Where one lost, another recovered. The fulled circle goes 'round and 'round." The final novel of Kathryn Magendie's Graces trilogy completes the saga begun in her acclaimed ebook bestseller TENDER GRACES and its sequel, SECRET GRACES.