Gerald Haslam Literary Honors - Reviewer's Comments Books In Print - Films - Earlier Publications

Just when Sacramento journalist Marty Martinez thinks his life can't get any worse, it does. His beloved son has died of AIDS, his wife has divorced him and joined a cult, and his daughter blames him for the disintegration of their family. Then a chance medical examination reveals that he has prostate cancer.

Grace Period is a profound, sometimes hilarious novel about living with serious illness. Marty copes with fear and the painful, sometimes embarrassing, treatment and effects of his disease, but instead of winding down his life he finds fresh purpose and joyful new love. His relationship with physician Miranda Mossi is deepened when her breast cancer returns and her grace under duress strengthens him.

Marty faces his bewildering new role as a cancer patient with grit and determination. He is a sympathetic, utterly convincing character seeking faith in a Catholic Church as troubled as he is; bringing increased intensity to his career as he investigates a far-reaching political scandal; reuniting his family in unexpected ways.

Grace Period shows us that existence at the precarious edge of life offers not only pain and loss but hope, a chance at redemption, love, and even happpiness.

Cloth, ISBN: 0-87417-679-4, $24.95 Individual copies of Grace Period will be available in 2006 at the University of Nevada Press and at AMAZON.COM.

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