by BETH WEBB HART

A haunting tale of stumbling faith, hard-won hope, white-knuckled love and a mysterious mercy.

Fifteen-year-old DeVeaux is now fifty miles from the place where she used to live--only fifty miles and five months since her blue-blood father declared bankruptcy.

'Used to' was a graceful home in a historic Charleston neighborhood. Country clubs, cotillions, childhood friends, and a close-knit church group. 'Now' is a run-down cottage on an island estate that is no longer in the family. A restaurant job, a cantankerous old truck, and mud on just about everything.

But something is wearing DeVeaux down. It's not living on the island, which is actually kind of interesting. And it's not missing her old friends, who have developed on annoying fixation on boys. What really bothers DeVeaux is that being 'ruined' has changed her dad into an ill-tempered jerk, and her mother just tiptoes around him. If the good Lord has a plan for saving them, now might be a good time to start.

A gritty but gentle drawl of a story, Grace at Low Tide is a tender and evocative portrait of a young girl embracing womanhood. With southern society as her backdrop, Beth Webb Hart paints for us a hard-luck family scrabbling to find its heart again. It is a testimony to the small miracles of love and loyalty--the gifts of grace that manage to keep us all afloat, even at our lowest ebb.