Brett Ellen Block's unforgettable debut novel, The Grave of God's Daughter, is a haunting story of lost innocence, transgression, faith, and forgiveness set against the stark canvas of a struggling mill town.
At the funeral of her estranged mother, a woman is faced with the past she has tried to put behind her only to find that what transpired in her childhood has never been further away than her own shadow, and now the choice to close the thirty-year rift between mother and daughter has been laid before her.
The year is 1941. Rooted in the lonely outreaches of the Allegheny Mountains is the town of Hyde Bend. Its heart was a steel mill; its bones are the tight community of Polish immigrants who inhabit it; and its blood, their fierce Catholic faith. But buried in the town's soul is a dangerous secret surrounding the death of a revered priest.
When a young girl from the town's poorest quarter accidentally unearths a sliver of the truth surrounding the illicit secret, a woman is found dead and Hyde Bend erupts in fear and finger-pointing. Compelled to unravel the intertwining mysteries, the young girl discovers her own family at the center. To save them and herself, she must confront everything she thought she knew, including her feelings about all she holds sacred.
Vivid, evocative, and psychologically penetrating, The Grave of God's Daughter captures the hidden inner life of a town battling to survive in a rapidly changing world, and paints an extraordinary portrait of a young girl's fierce longing for grace. The result is a novel of transcendent beauty that no reader will soon forget.