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Title: Grant Me Timely Grace

Author: Timothy Woods

Narrator: Andy Mack

Format: Unabridged

Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-09-11

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Washington, D.C., June 1863. It is the week before Gettysburg, and the nation's fate hangs in the balance.

A Union officer was not court-martialed after disobeying a direct order during battle. Why?

Major Russell Johns is being played by puppet-master Gerard Chantier, transplanted New Orleans businessman and toast of the town. Chantier hosts the city's most lavish entertainments, attended by members of Lincoln's cabinet and Washington's elite. Little do they know Gerard is coordinating an attack with Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry to take over the city, kidnap Lincoln and bring victory to the South.

When Russell's probing brings him in contact with Chantier's daughter, Therese, he has to face his most difficult moral choice: manipulating her to get to her father or honoring the one thing that has sustained him through years of battle and loss - his own integrity.

Critic Reviews:

"Grant Me Timely Grace... is highly recommended for those who enjoy historical fiction, especially fiction related to the Gettysburg Campaign." (Ken Williams, TOCWOC - A Civil War Blog)

Members Reviews:

An impressive first novel

In Grant Me Timely Grace, Timothy Woods does a nice job of evoking a peculiar time in U.S. history--June 1863. It was a time when most people just assumed that the Confederacy would win the war. The Union had one bad commanding general after another, and the government was corrupt to a degree that is hard to conceive of today. The Confederate calvary lurked near Washington D.C. at the same time that the main union army left it. Britain was very close to acknowledging the Confederacy. I've been a civil war buff since its 100 year anniversary, so I knew intellectually that most of this happened, but to have it brought to life so vividly in this novel had a strong impact; it made all this much more emotionally real. Reading Timely Grace was like reading a good alternative history novel--like Robert Harris' Fatherland which was set in a Germany that won WWII. The setting in Timely Grace felt unreal (in a good and interesting way). The thing is, this wasn't an imaginary situation. The context Woods places his characters in was real, and this makes his novel that much more interesting.

I learned some things reading this novel. For example, I was unaware that there were networks of African-American spies during the civil war. Also, much of the novel occurs in a setting I had not heard of--the "contraband camp." At this time slaves were still regarded as property under U.S. law. When they escaped from the south, the Union refused to return them to their southern "owners," claiming that they were "contraband"--just like any other property confiscated during the war. Large groups of these escaped slaves formed communities throughout the U.S. and these were called "contraband camps."

There were a few minor problems. The novel had a few anachronisms and one main character was a little too close to Spike Lee's concept of "the magical negro" for my taste. But these are really just quibbles, really.

Overall, this is an impressive first novel. Woods has a real eye for detail. The characters and settings are quite vivid.

Timely Grace has a believable and intriguing plot that I got caught up in.