SOURCE: “Love’s Reward,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. XV, No. 6, March, 1998, pp. 15-6.

In the following review of The Healing, Grossman states that the book differs from Jones's earlier works but that her humanistic romance is as moving as her previous novels.

The appearance of this novel by Gayl Jones, the first since her powerful debut in the 1970s with Corregidora and Eva's Man, is a notable event indeed. As her publishers report it, by the end of that decade Jones had abandoned her successful career as a fiction writer and teacher at the University of Michigan following “an incident of racial injustice.” Exiling herself to Europe for several years, she continued to write fiction, plays and poetry, occasionally publishing with small presses. Now, with The Healing, Jones announces a welcome return to the American scene, thematically and otherwise.

I found it hard (as many will...