Healing the unforgivable
At age thirty-three, Anna lost her three young daughters. They were abducted by their father and taken to the US. Three years later, they return to Australia with their father and stepfamily, but Anna’s access is limited and constrained by secrets and lies and manipulation.
Through years of heartbreak and fear, Anna must wrestle with her own powerlessness to regain custody of her daughters. She cannot protect them from the harms they reveal, and even less so from those they keep hidden. At age 40, she marries again and has a son, seizing a second chance to bring up a child in safety and love. But happy endings are hard to come by and old ghosts are stubborn companions.
How do we free ourselves from the patterns we were born to? Can shattered memories be pieced together into a story seamed with gold? Is it possible our lives might grow more beautiful for having been broken and made whole again?
A Gradual Grace is the fictionalised memoir of a woman, now in her eighties, whose redemptive journey as a writer ultimately transformed guilt and grief into forgiveness and love.
Publication date is 25 June 2023. Copies may be pre-ordered from publisher, Ginninderra Press, at $25 plus postage, or a signed copy direct from me, Christina Houen, for $25 including postage, by filling out the ‘Get in Touch’ on this website.
Testimonials
Shifting between “now, then and perhaps”, A Gradual Grace is a compelling read. Anna survives unimaginable losses, and like so many women, reinvents herself to find herself. Her journey, from being captured in the net of patriarchy, to finding the courage to tell her own story, is a hero’s journey. This intergenerational trauma should be required reading for family court professionals and for anyone trying to mend their seams with gold. As a mother, I wasn’t sure I could face the subject matter, but Houen communicates her story with sensitivity and poetry.
Leanne Margaret, author.