FINDING GRACE

LORETTA ROTHSCHILD is originally from London and currently splits her time between the UK and Italy. She lives with her husband, Nat, their young son, and their beloved dogs. Finding Grace is her debut novel.

“Loretta Rothschild’s debut novel has one of the best first chapter cliffhangers ever…and then it just keeps getting better. It’s inventive, tender, heartbreaking, redemptive—and it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.” —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Shocking, stylish, elegant and twisting. Finding Grace is a truly stunning debut.” —Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

“This poignant novel combines a tale of love, loss, and fate with a thread of increasing tension as the story builds to its inevitable outcome. Hand this one to fans of Jodi Picoult and Anna Quindlen.” —Booklist

“Emotionally charged…the novel’s examination of love and family will leave readers with plenty to chew on.” —Publishers Weekly

“A blend of romance and mystery…Rothschild’s depiction of a man desperate to protect his burgeoning love is compassionate and lived-in.” —Oprah Daily

1. How did the first chapter set the tone for the rest of the novel?

2. Tom often wonders what Grace is thinking. After Honor passes away, she’s able to read Tom’s mind, and she sees parts of him that she couldn’t while she was alive. Have you ever wanted to know what your loved ones were thinking? Without this kind of glimpse into their subconscious, how well can we really know someone, with all of their facets and dark corners?

3. Lauren claims that she and Tom both told lies. But are all lies created equal? If not, what differentiates them? How did their respective lies affect the people around them? Discuss Lauren’s relationship with Tom and its evolution throughout the novel. When do you think Lauren’s feelings toward him developed? Do you think Honor had any clue while she was alive?

4. How does Tom’s story suggest that even genuinely good people get lost in the overwhelming emotions of new love? What are some impediments that Tom and Grace experience as two people finding love after loss?

5. Tom and Grace are both “acutely aware that after a certain age, no one ever gets into bed alone. There’s always someone else in the room in some form or another. Whether it’s holiday memories or drunken mistakes or ghosts, the past cannot be rewritten” (page 178). How do you think Tom’s ghosts shaped him and led him to Grace? How can our “ghosts” (and the lessons we learn from them) potentially prepare us for great things in our future?

6. This novel explores several chosen-family relationships—for Tom, Annie, and Oliver; for Grace, the Sunday Blues women, Zara, and Rebecca. What do you think it takes for people to feel bonded like “family”?

7. “Grief’s iron grip never weakens. You just become accustomed to its hand around your throat, moving forward but never moving on” (pages 44–45). Discuss how the characters in Finding Grace experience grief on their own time lines and in their own ways. How do they help one another when the metaphoric hand on their neck squeezes a little tighter?

8. “But children have a superpower we overlook” (page 308). How does Henry drive Tom’s and Grace’s evolution over the course of the novel? What kinds of things can kids teach us, and do you think it’s more about learning or unlearning?

9. Honor says, “When I died, Tom became a widower, a word that needs no further explanation. But there is no word in the English dictionary for a parent who loses a child. They remain the same: a father, a mother, suspended in time. Forever explaining, forever retelling, forever tethered to an indigestible loss” (pages 300–301). How does the absence of a succinct label for a parent who loses a child affect Tom? How did Tom’s loss of Chloe affect the way he parented Henry? What role did Henry play in Tom’s grieving process?

10. What role does fertility technology play in the novel, and why do you think secrets and lies seem to surround it?

11. As explored in Finding Grace, motherhood can take many forms and look very different for different women.
    Through Honor, Colette, Grace, Lauren, and the moms at Henry’s school, what examples of mothering does the novel present? Discuss how Honor and Grace are both Henry’s mother.

12. What do you make of Honor’s and Grace’s names? What do you imagine Grace and Tom will name their baby?

13. How does reading Honor’s memoir and children’s books help Tom, Henry, and Colette? How can Finding Grace—or any novel that explores love, loss, infertility, chosen-family, ghosts, moral dilemmas, etc.—help a reader experiencing something similar?

Q&A with author Loretta Rothschild

How did you decide to write a book where an improbable love story intersects with the complex experience of fertility technology?
Over the last few years, I’ve been captivated by the advances in how the technology around fertility has evolved. With this new technology, there’s more room for secrets to be kept and to be revealed, which is rich fodder for storytelling. So while Finding Grace is a book that explores the way in which a simple choice becomes a big secret, I wanted to write a love story that reckoned with these new conversations, ethical questions, and, most important, the way that love can shift around new realities to create indelible bonds.

Tom falls in love in the midst of a massive ethical quandary. What drew you to that kind of thorny situation?
Falling in love is messy. It rarely sticks to a script or looks “perfect.” People can fall in love when they’re committed to someone else. They fall in love with the wrong person. Real, deep love is complex, chemical, and sometimes ethically dubious. And Tom was the perfect character to explore that dichotomy: Even good, loving, kind people can’t control their hearts.

Sunday Blues acts as a steady drumbeat throughout Finding Grace. How do these women fit into the book’s central questions?
The Sunday Blues girls are loveable, high-spirited, and wise, but they are also widows, giving them the power to play two other critical roles: First, they remind us of the future after loss—they are the living, breathing examples of the healing properties of time. They also act as a chosen family for Grace—another family structure that has entered our public conversation in recent years. In a book about the intricacy of family, it felt right to include one that’s based entirely on the loving bonds of friendship.

Why include the stark reality of human suffering in this beautiful romance?
If there’s one thing we know about life, it’s that with every joy, there are unavoidable tragedies in equal measure. But one of the reasons I am so compelled by love stories and, in a way, by love itself is the way that love endures, even in the midst of tremendous sorrow. I’m also drawn to the demands love requires of us—growth, truth, and complete vulnerability. If you want true love you have to be truthful. It’s the only way forward.

One of the questions this book asks is: What is a great love? Is it true that one love doesn’t take from the other? Does the universe provide an infinite source of love that doesn’t run out or run dry? All our beds and lives are haunted by joy, by grief, by euphoria. We all have ghosts. Until I wrote this book, I didn’t fully grasp how true this statement is. I didn’t fully comprehend how each heartbreak follows you like a shadow. I didn’t realize that these heartbreaks are the wonderful stepping stones to true love.

What was a most unexpected discovery in writing this book?
When I wrote this book, I wanted to explore what it meant to be a mother, but what I ended up finding the most fascinating was the relationship between father and son. We so often view life through the lens of perfection. We can all be great parents, friends, and partners when the sun is out. But what interests me is what happens when the cards are down. The general consensus is that we are teaching our children how to be patient and kind, but actually they are the teachers. They teach us things about ourselves. They can make you feel like you are invincible—they also remind you daily that you aren’t. Tom learns from his children how to be a present, devoted father.

A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

I set out to write a sweeping love story between two soulmates who would find each other against the odds, fall in love, and be given a chance to create a new life together. But as I sketched out my plot, there was a missing piece: There is no meet-cute without ghosts. I soon realized that the most interesting part of this love story was not the reasons they should be together but rather the reasons they shouldn’t—not just the internal pathos of dating, but a truly difficult set of circumstances to overcome. I wanted it to be messy and even painful, like life. I wanted love to demand things of Tom and Grace: growth and reckoning and effort in order to be transcendent.

So I began to think about the device I could use to introduce what would become a massive ethical friction: a secret.

There’s no more powerful ticking time bomb than a secret—the tension builds as relationships fracture under the weight of an omission, and lovable characters struggle to maintain their own morality, as the secret’s ripple effects spread ever outward. In writing, I can ask my characters to investigate what makes up a lie versus an omission and untangle the moral realities around the little falsehoods we all obscure from one another on a daily basis.

But one particular kind of secret—a family secret—is going through a major change that leads to even thornier situations to wrangle. I’ve been entirely compelled by both innovations in fertility technology and the advent of consumer DNA testing. The latter is especially revolutionary—it’s already having the impact of bringing long-buried family truths to light.

Revelations like secret children and second families mean we’re in for some heady and complex conversations. As a mother, I’m fascinated by the many ways we can now make and grow a family; it’s a feeling, not solely a matter of DNA.

Finding Grace is a love story that delves into the power of one simple lie and how that lie can become the foundation of your life. A devoted husband falls in love with his family’s anonymous egg donor, creating a story with an ethical quandary at its beating heart. These thorny, taboo subjects are where I hope to spend my writing career—to create poignant stories that hold life’s deepest sorrows alongside enduring love that transcends us all.

Thank you for reading Grace and Tom’s love story—and I hope you find their sometimes agonizing journey as moving as I do.