A NOTE OF GRACE

This is enchanting. While it hasn't the wicked tongue-in-cheek humor of Honor Tracy's The Straight and Narrow Path. It has originality, high drama and a certain poignancy - without sentimentality- that give it top billing....Fred Gedge, rural contractor, has ventured to enter a contest for the building of a new Civic Center and rumor has it that he has won. That- and the incredible performance on his trumpet with the village band have changed a modest, assured workman into a rather timorous character- for surely something outside human control had taken over his life. Then he finds himself further caught up in things outside his very Protestant Chapel background. A chapel is burned to the ground -- but the nuns whose chapel it was, are saved, along with the old folks they cared form. He ventures an expression of relief that is ""only"" the chapel - and is confronted by the blazing wrath of Sister Ignatius. And it is Sister Ignatius who takes over the story, as she fights for the survival of the community, the rebuilding of the chapel. What a tale, with its suspense, its quota of courage against odds, its human frailties. The nuns, with Sister Ignatius as foreman - -and the reluctant Gedge as furtive supervisor, face what seems inevitable defeat up to the ultimate climax. One of the Sisters after another comes through as an individual, rather than a type, and the duel between Sister Ignatius and Fred Gedge is sustained to its final vindication. A heartwarming book.