Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World

Jones (Trauma and Grace), president of Union Theological Seminary in New York and former president of the American Academy of Religion, recounts her life history and poses questions about faith, love, and forgiveness in this engrossing memoir. Jones grew up in Oklahoma and was the oldest daughter of a theology professor and a mother who was not gifted with mothering skills. Jones’s grandfather was a distinguished judge and sexual predator. She recounts how his sexual abuse became worse and required the family to separate from him. The Oklahoma plains way of life, with its “sodbusting” farmers, outlaws, and “prairie theology” that crisscrossed denominations, made a lasting impression on her. Watching her father’s civil rights activism was also a formative learning experience. Jones struggles to understand the amount of cruelty in American history (including racism in her own family’s past), most strikingly illustrated by her recollection of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which affected her family, all of whom lived near the scene of the attack. Jones is a plainspoken, talented teacher and this moving memoir illustrates her deeply reflective ethics and eloquently captures Jones’s response to her life’s trials. (Mar.)