ABOUT GRACE by Anthony Doerr

David Winkler’s dreams come true—literally.  However, sometimes they are nightmares, such as the one in which he fails to save his infant daughter from a flood.  Rather than place himself in a position in which that could happen, he abandons his wife Sandy and daughter Grace, and yes, the title is a double entendre.  He lands on an island in the Caribbean and manages to scrape together a life for 25 years, with the help of a couple who themselves are exiles from Chile.  Their daughter, Naaliyah, becomes somewhat of a surrogate for Grace, until she takes off for graduate school in Alaska—Winkler’s home state.  The central question is whether or not Grace survived the flood, which was in progress when David went AWOL.  He returns to the States with the hope of answering that question, after he realizes that the tragic outcomes predicted in some of his dreams are not inevitable.  Naaliyah and David are both scientists:  she studies insects, and he is a hydrologist whose main interest is snowflakes.  Many pages of this book are devoted to insects and snowflakes, and perhaps there is a metaphor here, but these pages drag the novel down a bit.  The enigma of David and his misadventures are sufficient to drive the book, along with the prophetic dreams, two of which involve drownings—no surprise for a scientist whose field is the study of water.  So much of this novel revolves around science that I found it ironic that something so unscientific as a prophetic dream is the main factor in altering the course of David’s life.