SOURCE: “Amazing Grace,” in The Nation, May 11, 1998, pp. 38, 40-42.

In the following review of Just As I Thought, Leonard praises Paley's life, activism, and moral conviction.

Never mind how wonderful it is that Grace Paley should have imagined an alter ego named Faith Darwin. One of them is about to undergo an enormous change at the last minute. “Just when I most needed important conversation, a sniff of the man-wide world, that is, at least one brainy companion who could translate my friendly language into his tongue of undying carnal love, I was forced to lounge in our neighborhood park, surrounded by children.” Like a Transcendental angel out of Emerson, she’s twelve feet up in a sycamore tree, from which she can see almost everything except the horizon of that “sensible, socialist, Zionist world” her mother had dreamt of—a future full of faith and grace:

“What...