Moments of Glad Grace: A Memoir

Product Description
Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir about a daughter’s evolving relationship with her aging father, the small moments we share, and the hunt for roots and belonging. The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest ― any at all ― in genealogy. Very quickly, the father-daughter pilgrimage becomes more comical than fruitful, more of a bittersweet adventure than a studious mission. And rather than rigorous genealogy, their explorations move into the realm of family and forgiveness, the primal search for identity and belonging, and questions about responsibility to our ancestors and the extent to which we are shaped by the people who came before us. Though continually bursting with humor, Moments of Glad Grace is a story about identity, history, and ultimately becomes a song of appreciation for the precious and limited time we have with our parents. “A richly layered journey, charmingly told.” ― Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything
Review
“Moments of Glad Grace is an endearing delight.” ― Shelf Awareness\n“This is a wise, funny, and tender book, beautifully written and perfectly executed from first to last sentence. It’s about a daughter and her ageing father, it’s about genealogy and identity, it’s about Ireland, but actually it’s about how we love the ones we love. Moments of Glad Grace is a travelogue of the heart. It’s a road you’ll want to travel.” ― Yann Martel, #1 bestselling author of Life of Pi\n“This is a well written book that celebrates love and maturity, wisdom and forgiveness, and the hard earned peace that occurs when you have the courage to pass through heartfelt honesty to the other side of tragedy, loss and sorrow. Highly recommended.” ― Vancouver Sun\n“A richly layered journey, charmingly told.” ― Plum Johnson, author of They Left Us Everything\n“Dancing between hilarity and the poignancy of a last sojourn with her father, Alison Wearing once again reveals herself as a sharp and tender observer of this mortal coil we call life. Moments of Glad Grace is a journey you won’t want to miss.” ― Merilyn Simonds, author of Refuge
About the Author
Alison Wearing is the bestselling author of Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter, an Indigo Top 50 pick shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Prize and longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, and Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. She teaches, performs solo multimedia plays, and leads writing workshops internationally.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The customs officer has the face of a merry alcoholic who also enjoys his pie. His friendly eyes flutter when I tell him the purpose of my trip―to help my father with some gynaecological research―but he doesn’t ask any further questions. Just stamps my passport and says Welcome to Ireland, love, which feels like a moment of sanity in an otherwise crazed world. I have come here to help my father with some genealogical research. He’s quite serious about it and has been at it for years, but a few months ago he mentioned a desire to revisit Dublin’s libraries and archives, adding that he would prefer to do it with the help of a research assistant. Count me in! I’d said immediately, though we both knew I fall asleep at the mere mention of genealogy, a word I am forever confusing with gynaecology, particularly when saying it aloud. Still, we’re here. And a bit of boredom in the archives seems a small price to pay for the chance to spend ten days in Dublin with my dad. He’ll be eighty in a few months―he’d say he’s 79½―and is so fit and active I have wondered if I’ll be the one scrambling to keep up. But he also has incipient Parkinson’s, a disease that has begun to possess and hammer him, and I jumped at