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GRACE

Name: GRACE
Rating: 3.36 (1 reviews)

Michael Stewart

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Grace Holmwood has been seeing bright lights, memories of her twin brother who died five years before, and now beatific visions of the Virgin Mary. The local priest, Father Gregory, feels that the hand of God is near and encourages Grace and her mother Laura in his belief these are divinely inspired. But Dr Leonard Grigson knows that something far less holy is at work. And Leonard, who treated Grace's brother during his illness and is now a close family friend, is determined that the truth should remain buried.Grace, at seventeen, has begun to question her faith and she is as sceptical as anyone about her "visions". But in her home village - after a blind woman regains her sight after Grace prays for her - she is regarded with reverence, as someone touched by the divine. With the Vatican investigating (though with strange reluctance) and Leonard decrying any irrational or spiritual cause, Grace finds herself caught in the bitter crossfire between religion and science. Then Grace becomes pregnant, to the astonishment and disbelief of everyone - most of all Grace herself who knows this is a biological impossibility. While Father Gregory is convinced she has been blessed by a virgin conception and envisions the Second Coming, Leonard is tormented by his knowledge of the true condition of the infant she is carrying. But Grace miscarries, and the visions, which had briefly abated, return with nightmarish force.Finally the truth is forced to light, and a more sinister reality becomes revealed which is neither sacred nor profane, but all too human. That reality, which has been Leonard's guilty secret since the death of Grace's brother, now becomes her inescapable and lethal legacy...

GenresHorrorFiction

410 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1989