Echoes of Grace
by Guadalupe García McCall
Tu Books (Lee & Low), 2022. 375 pages.
Review written November 5, 2022, from a library book
This was a hard book to read, yet a lyrical and powerful one.
Grace and her sister Mercy live near the border in Texas with their father, their abuela, and Mercy’s little boy Alexander. But right at the beginning, when Grace is supposed to be watching Alexander, he runs out into traffic and is killed.
But Grace keeps on seeing him. He follows her around as she goes about her day, as he did before. And this goes with the Echoes that Grace sees, strange visions and otherworldly people. Her mother and grandmother had visions like that, but her family isn’t very patient about them, and her sister hates her because of Alexander’s death.
And while Grace is coping with everything life is throwing at her, she also remembers what happened three years earlier, when she went to Mexico and stayed with her mother’s mother. This was after her mother was killed nine years before that. The chapters alternate, leading up to an awful event.
But why did her mother never tell them that their grandmother was alive? And why is Grace only now remembering what happened? And how does it relate to the visions of her mother that keep popping up in disturbing ways?
This book is not about sweetness and light. But it is about love and power and carrying on.
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