Grace Healey

Grace Healey is one of the protagonists of the novel. Her story takes place a few years after the events of World War II in 1946. Grace lives alone in New York City, having moved there after the death of her husband Tom during an army training exercise. Grace also works for Frankie, a lawyer specializing in European refugee affairs.

Grace is generally portrayed as confident, capable, and thorough, though also at times possessed of self-doubt and self-criticism. Grace opts to live alone in New York City, unusual for a widow of the time, much to the chagrin of her family, who wish for her to live with them. Grace and her mother eventually reconcile their differences, though Grace realizes that “living the life she wanted might mean she and her mother would always be at a distance” (274).

Grace is also a driving narrative force in the novel...