I was hooked by this book from moment I read of its sale in Publishers Marketplace: "Kathryn Magendie's (Tender Graces), about a woman returning to the mountains of West Virginia to bury her late mother and reconcile turbulent family memories." I Googled the author, found her website and both of her blogs, and settled in for the long wait. When the book arrived, I put everything aside to read it. You see, my father was from the mountains of West Virginia, and though I've never lived there, something about the area calls to me. At the same time, I recognize how very difficult the culture was that he came from. He grew up running barefoot in the woods ("wild and dirty" is how Magendie describes it), hunting and fishing with his brothers to supplement what little money his mother could bring in. The more respectable townsfolk looked down on them for many reasons -- not to the least of which is that my grandmother had children with three different men (and she wasn't married to all of them). In Tender Graces, Virginia Kate has returned to the family home to bury the alcoholic mother who casually neglected her as a child, and whom she hasn't seen for several decades. The home is a time capsule of sorts -- nothing has been changed, and even Virginia Kate's child-sized, white cotton panties lie in the handmade dresser as if she'd just left. As she sorts through the memorabalia of her painful childhood, she comes to realize her mother was not exactly as she'd thought and comes to recognize a surprising but enormous gift of grace her mother gave all her children. My father's childhood was very much like Virginia Kate's. Even the house -- perched on the mountain, a long road going straight down in front to the holler, a neighbor on the hill to one side, a vacant house on the hill to the other side, the mountain rising straight up behind -- could have been my grandmother's. Poverty, meager gardens, alcoholism, soul-crushing neglect and casual abuse, even Native American heritage. It's all familiar. This is the culture in which my father was raised, the culture in which *I* would have been raised but for the grace of my father leaving West Virginia to marry and raise his family. It was hard sometimes to separate myself from Virginia Kate. Though I never lived like that (again, thanks to my father!), I have cousins who did and do, cousins very much like me in every other way, and I see how they struggle to overcome the negative affects of their own devastating, and at the same time, beloved culture. All the characters in Tender Graces are complex, almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Not one character could I simply like or dislike. Virginia Kate's mother is exotic and fascinating and freespirited, but ... Her father is a devoted husband and loving father except ... Rebekah is sweet and generous, yet ... These are characters I want to know, in real life, except I couldn't live with them. People I want to be, though I know I'd never survive it. Real enough to clamber off the page and take up uncomfortable residence under my skin. And Magendie's language is just exquisite. I particularly loved her use of adjectives as nouns. Chapter 1 begins with the line, "All my tired flies out the window when I see Grandma Faith standing in the mountain mists." Turn the page, and she says, "I pick up the Mary Janes and see my sad in the shine." What I love about Tender Graces is that Magendie took an unflinching look at a sub-culture that can destroy its children, but she did so with grace, gentleness and even nostalgia. What I love most is that Virginia Kate is not crushed by her painful childhood: she is whole and well, and returning to her sister mountain with love, eventually embracing all that her childhood brought with it. I wish I could find a way to tell my father, "Thank you for leaving your mountain to raise us," and then to add, "Thank you for bringing us back to it later," and somehow instill in my inadequate message how very important it is. Heck, I wish I could convince my father to read the book. I think it would be good and healing for him, but he doesn't read women's fiction. *Sigh* This is supposed to be a review of Kathryn Magendie's exquisite literary novel, not a general discussion of my father's peculiarities, but maybe that's my point. Tender Graces became part of my family. Virginia Kate could have been me. Her mother could have been my father's mother. Her brother Micah could have been my Dad. Maybe that's the highest praise I could ever give a book anyway: I couldn't separate my reality from Magendie's fiction.