It’s time I stopped beating around the bush! Plying you with, what I hoped to be, enticing details: a signed contract, title and book cover. Perhaps you’d actually like to know what Humanity’s Grace is about! Now that Bedazzled Ink has created a page for this to-be-released January 2022 title, I figure it is time.

This fourth book of mine is a collection of 15 linked short stories, most of them based in Astoria, Oregon. What this means is that while each story can be read independently, together they complete a larger and much more complex tale. Okay, enough of this stalling, here’s a synopsis.

Salty air, low lying clouds, and crooning of seagulls near the towering Astoria Column and the flowing Columbia River set the scene for Humanity’s Grace: A Linked Collection of Short Stories by Dede Montgomery [978-1-949290-72-1, GusGus Press, Bedazzled Ink, January 2022].

Montgomery intertwines the lives of several characters from her novel Beyond the Ripples with the lives of new characters all uniquely connected to a murder in downtown Astoria, Oregon. A murder accusation throws the characters into darkness, as they reassess earlier beliefs, past decisions, and actions. A police officer haunted by his past. A young woman awakening from a vivid dream of a friend from before. A mother who wonders what she did wrong. A son who aches for others to be kind. A daughter who questions her father’s past, while her mother remembers parts of the man she had forgotten. A stranger wonders about the significance of a message she was given.

Humanity’s Grace presents the opportunity for the reader to meander through sorrow and sadness, joy and regret, all reminding us of the startling and collective beauty of life’s connections.

Learn a bit more about this book along with others I have written on Bedazzled Ink’s website. You can also keep up with news about Humanity’s Grace by occasionally checking back on my book page, which today reads a lot like the this blog, but will change as my publication date nears.

Praise

Montgomery writes using the skills of a weaver; presenting rough fibers of life, sadness, and regrets, along with the soft thread of tenderness, love, and human relationships to create these stories; like a loom displays its almost finished right angles of cloth. — Doug Erickson, co-author of Jefferson’s Western Explorations: Discoveries made in exploring the Missouri, Red River and Washita

What to do while waiting for Humanity’s Grace to be released?

Read Beyond the Ripples, if you haven’t yet! Frank, Anne, Monica and Sarah all reappear from pages of Ripples, joining new characters in this new collection of linked short stories.

About Beyond the Ripples: Memoirist Dede Montgomery has the uncanny ability to create the quality of presence inside story.“
—Jane Kirkpatrick, Award-winning author of Everything She Didn’t Say.”

Will there be a launch celebration?

Of course! Look for news about a book launch to be held at the Willamette Ale and Cider House, West Linn, early in 2022.

Where did the idea for this collection of short stories come from?

Hold on! We’ve got to save some stories for later!

What else?

When Humanity’s Grace comes out, it will be the first book I have written that I won’t be able to read to Mom. I am content, though, to have been able to tell her about the story collection as I was writing it. As our Mom would generally do with anything her kids and grandkids shared, she told me “It sounded great and she was very proud of me.” How’s that for a book blurb?