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Grace Point
Moving with her husband to the coastal town of Grace Point to save her marriage, Zoe Barlow suffers a mother's worst nightmare--the disappearance of her infant son, Adam. Reprint.
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
1 person is currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Anne D. LeClaire
30 books99 followersI grew up on a farm in a small town in Western Massachusetts, the middle of three daughters of a school teacher mother and an electrician father. I was the family "story-teller," not always meant in the good way. In fact, I love that while I was once punished for making up stories, I now get paid for it.
Okay, so I was a small town girl. But my ambitions were as fanciful as they were impractical. My early career choices were fueled by dreams nurtured in our town library where books fired my imagination. At various times I dreamt of being an FBI agent, a girl detective, a pilot, a spy and a cow girl.
I'm a graduate of the MacDuffie School in Springfield, Massachusetts and an alumna of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts and Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
I met my future husband, Hillary, while on summer break from college. It's a classic summer story. Co-ed goes to Cape Cod for a summer job, meets and falls in love with a native and ends up living on the Cape. We now live in the seaside village of South Chatham and have two children, Hope D’Avril and Christopher, and sixteen chickens.
While raising a family, I was no closer to being the F.B.I. agent or cowgirl but did work as a radio broadcaster, an actress, a journalist and a correspondent for The Boston Globe. My work appeared in The New York Times, Redbook, and Yankee magazine, among others.
It wasn't until 1983 that, pursuing a long-held dream and encouraged by the fiction editor of Yankee, I quit my journalism jobs and began a novel, Land’s End, which was published by Bantam Books in 1985. I have since written eight other novels, including the critically acclaimed Entering Normal, The Lavender Hour, and Leaving Eden. My work has been published in many countries including Great Britain, Italy, Greece, France, Japan, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Netherlands, Brazil and Israel.
My first book-length non-fiction, Listening Below the Noise, is a meditation on the practice of silence. In addition to novels and the memoir, I write short stories and essays. I also teach and lecture here and abroad on the creative process, as well as on the practice of silence. I have taught creative writing on Cape Cod, in France, Ireland and Jamaica, at the Maui Writers Conference, and to women in prison.
My essays have been included in a number of anthologies, among them I’ve Always Meant to Tell You, Letters to Our Mothers: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers; From Daughters and Sons to Fathers: What I’ve Never Said; and A Sense of Place: An Anthology of Cape Women Writers.
My interests are gardening, yoga, theater, travel and aviation (I am a private pilot). I'm also interested in genealogy and am a cousin of the poet Emily Dickinson.
Okay, so I was a small town girl. But my ambitions were as fanciful as they were impractical. My early career choices were fueled by dreams nurtured in our town library where books fired my imagination. At various times I dreamt of being an FBI agent, a girl detective, a pilot, a spy and a cow girl.
I'm a graduate of the MacDuffie School in Springfield, Massachusetts and an alumna of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, Massachusetts and Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
I met my future husband, Hillary, while on summer break from college. It's a classic summer story. Co-ed goes to Cape Cod for a summer job, meets and falls in love with a native and ends up living on the Cape. We now live in the seaside village of South Chatham and have two children, Hope D’Avril and Christopher, and sixteen chickens.
While raising a family, I was no closer to being the F.B.I. agent or cowgirl but did work as a radio broadcaster, an actress, a journalist and a correspondent for The Boston Globe. My work appeared in The New York Times, Redbook, and Yankee magazine, among others.
It wasn't until 1983 that, pursuing a long-held dream and encouraged by the fiction editor of Yankee, I quit my journalism jobs and began a novel, Land’s End, which was published by Bantam Books in 1985. I have since written eight other novels, including the critically acclaimed Entering Normal, The Lavender Hour, and Leaving Eden. My work has been published in many countries including Great Britain, Italy, Greece, France, Japan, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, Netherlands, Brazil and Israel.
My first book-length non-fiction, Listening Below the Noise, is a meditation on the practice of silence. In addition to novels and the memoir, I write short stories and essays. I also teach and lecture here and abroad on the creative process, as well as on the practice of silence. I have taught creative writing on Cape Cod, in France, Ireland and Jamaica, at the Maui Writers Conference, and to women in prison.
My essays have been included in a number of anthologies, among them I’ve Always Meant to Tell You, Letters to Our Mothers: An Anthology of Contemporary Women Writers; From Daughters and Sons to Fathers: What I’ve Never Said; and A Sense of Place: An Anthology of Cape Women Writers.
My interests are gardening, yoga, theater, travel and aviation (I am a private pilot). I'm also interested in genealogy and am a cousin of the poet Emily Dickinson.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 12, 2009
A novel of suspense, a bit historical set on Cape Cod, but in a fictional town..anyone who lives here knows it is Provincetown back when..
January 3, 2018
Not at all what I expected but it was a great read, a real page turner for me :)
July 10, 2022
The dust jacket advertises this as romantic suspense… it made me very sad. Every male character in this book is pretty much a misogynist except for the baby. The female characters are sad and trapped in their lives by not only their choices but by the mores of the time.
Zoe is just trying to enjoy her life with her daughter and newborn son when she finds four baby skeletons hidden in her attic. Zoe’s struggling after her husband felt up their teenage babysitter the year before. 🤮 The book then goes back in time to the 1940s, where a happily married woman named Rosalina slips into an unexpected affair with a visiting artist. She is then scorned by the town when she becomes pregnant.
The sadness was laced throughout this book. Zoe can’t trust her husband (and no wonder, because being a creepy molester aside, he’s also an asshole). We are also privy to pretty much every male character’s sexual thoughts. There’s really no difference in whether the scene is set in 1990 or 1940- the men are constantly thinking sexual or hateful things about the women around them and after a while it gets really grating.
The book ended on what I assume the author thought was a happy note, but the fact that Zoe is just supposed to forgive her husband does not to me seem like a happy ending. There’s no hero in this book however. Poor Zoe. Poor Rosalina.
Zoe is just trying to enjoy her life with her daughter and newborn son when she finds four baby skeletons hidden in her attic. Zoe’s struggling after her husband felt up their teenage babysitter the year before. 🤮 The book then goes back in time to the 1940s, where a happily married woman named Rosalina slips into an unexpected affair with a visiting artist. She is then scorned by the town when she becomes pregnant.
The sadness was laced throughout this book. Zoe can’t trust her husband (and no wonder, because being a creepy molester aside, he’s also an asshole). We are also privy to pretty much every male character’s sexual thoughts. There’s really no difference in whether the scene is set in 1990 or 1940- the men are constantly thinking sexual or hateful things about the women around them and after a while it gets really grating.
The book ended on what I assume the author thought was a happy note, but the fact that Zoe is just supposed to forgive her husband does not to me seem like a happy ending. There’s no hero in this book however. Poor Zoe. Poor Rosalina.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 15, 2021
Wow! What a crazy ride. I think I have experienced every emotion possible reading this book. The storyline was well thought out. Incredibly well-written telling two stories simultaneously. The ending is mind-blowing.
May 26, 2018
This could have been a much better book than it is. A very good story, but the characters are written in a way that made me just want to smack all of them.
July 22, 2018
What an interesting read! I read it 2017 and then I re-read it in 2018. The second time was the charm. The book ranges from the 1940s to the 1990s. Fifty years of lies and religious guilt.
December 8, 2020
at least I didn't figure out the ending.
September 11, 2024
This book could have been good, but the author is apparently obsessed with perverted sex and insanity. Skip this novel!
February 20, 2008
This was my first book I picked out that was not recommended to me, so it holds a special little place in the bookcase of my heart. The story was compelling and interesting. Good read.
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October 15, 2008M LeC
February 1, 2010
A woman finds the skeletons of 4 infants stored in a hat box in her attic
February 4, 2011
Lots of twists and turns - very captivating!!!
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January 5, 2019This wasn't bad but the CEO of Penguin had a crush on the author so he tortured us to place it prominently in the stores and our accounts weren't very cooperative
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews