Souls Raised From The Dead

Description for SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD by Doris Betts:

Mary Grace Thompson is thirteen, poised on the delicate cusp between childhood and becoming a woman.  She lives with her divorced father, Frank, a North Carolina state trooper; her mother ran away with the local tax collector---and the taxes.  Mary Grace is just beginning to try her wings---wangling her way into riding lessons, nudging her father toward a relationship with her beautiful riding instructor; dreaming of boys.

Every day Frank brings calm to other people's catastrophes, but suddenly, catastrophe strikes his own life:  Mary Grace is diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease.  Armed with courage, humor, and a shaky faith in God, Frank, the family, and their friends face the loss of this beloved child.

How they deal with Mary Grace's death and their own lives is told in a superb, compassionate, and unsentimental novel that is both tough and tender, powerful and gentle, as heartbreaking and as funny as life itself.