Grace: A Story

Sarah Robertson is an associate editor of the Canadian Book Review
Annual.

This fascinating blend of military history, science fiction, theology,
and references to popular culture gives new meaning to the expression
“ontological anxiety.” As the story opens, Grace MacDuff, an
elementary-school teacher living in Edmonton in the early 1960s,
experiences profound dislocation when, for reasons initially unknown,
she finds herself in the year 400 BC. A wise and compassionate horse
named Amor informs her that she is a “wraith ... [t]he ghost of
someone not yet dead.” From their benign but unsettling limbo (“the
twilight of creation,” Amor calls it), Grace and Amor witness the
retreat of the Greek military commander Xenophon and his 10,000 soldiers
through hostile Persian territory. They also encounter two time
travelers who have been sent from the future to uncover ancient
knowledge. A trip to the year 1962 by one of the travelers reveals some
mind-bending connections between the principal characters. Paul Davies
has fashioned an intricate and thematically resonant tale of multiple
odysseys that manages to challenge and entertain in equal measure.