Grace for Grace

Book excerpt: With Grace for Grace, celebrated film and television director and screenwriter Steve De Jarnatt brings his exuberant style of storytelling to the page. These wildly imaginative stories are characterized by idiosyncratic syntax, sweeping scale, and the lush inner lives of the characters. De Jarnatt's protagonists are in search of meaning and belonging, and often, at the same time, redemption and revenge. "Wraiths in a Swelter" is both a ghost story and a confessional memoir, following a deliriously exhausted EMT through a deadly Chicago heat wave. "Her Great Blue" is a surreal interspecies love story, while "Rubiaux Rising" is a tale of triumph amid disaster during Hurricane Katrina, and "Harmony Arm" is a comi-tragic romp through a Furry convention. The stories in Grace for Grace are crucibles that test human, and occasionally inhuman, limits, showing readers the surprising changes brought about by characters' encounters with unexpected extremes. This collection, which includes a Best American Short Stories selection, brings De Jarnatt's distinctive voice and cinematic vision to a new audience.