Saving Grace by Lee Smith

Florida Grace Shepherd is the title and main character as well as the narrator of this story of her life. “Gracie” is the daughter of the Reverend Virgil Shepherd and his third wife, Fannie Flowers. There are four other children and together they travel as a family to wherever Virgil can find an audience for his preaching. He has no income to support his family so depends upon believers to provide what they need. The outstanding trait of Virgil’s holiness message is the “handling of serpents”- poisonous snakes. Although there is only one brief reference to the practice in the Bible, it is the centerpiece of his ministry. Gracie spends several years of her childhood with her family in a house on Scrabble Creek, in Tennessee. She counts this as the best part of her life, even though many times she was hungry and cold and afraid that her father would be fatally bitten by one of the many serpents he “handled” during worship. There are many disturbing facets of the family’s life that no doubt helped to shape Gracie’s life. Following a sort of large “revival” at the Scrabble Creek church and the death of her mother, Gracie is taken by her father to be the “scripture” reader at the church’s he could persuade along the road to allow him to preach. When Gracie was 16 Virgil left her and ran off with a female “convert.” The remainder of the story is about Gracie’s adult life and her journey to find out who she is and what she want s out of life.