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Grace Period
by Gerald W. Haslam
University of Nevada Press, 2006. 289 pages.
Gerald Haslam’s reputation as a writer seems to have limited general knowledge of his work to folks out West. Born in Bakersfield, California, he was raised in that state’s Great Central Valley, and much of his work has been set there. But, like writers such as Wendell Berry of Kentucky, Haslam takes on issues and situations that transcend specific places but are effectively grounded by the concreteness of those places because of the author’s love of his place and his ability to share it with readers who have no firsthand knowledge of it.
It might sound flippant to call Grace Period “the great American prostate cancer novel,” but I do not intend for that to be humorous. In a country with a large number of people 50 and over, and with families scattered and healthcare in crisis, the story of one man’s response to his diagnosis with the disease is significant. Add to it the context that Haslam builds around that, and you have a rich story of relationships lost and found, crises encountered, of death being faced with courage and awe. The Central California setting allows for the addition of the element of that area’s cultural and racial history and conflicts, which also play a role in the ways Haslam’s characters make it through every aspect of their days.
The narrator, Marty Martinez, is a journalist for a Sacramento newspaper. Estranged from his siblings and divorced after the AIDS-death of his son shattered his marriage, he finds himself also on the outs with his daughter and in a “rebuilding” frame of mind when he is diagnosed with prostate cancer. He soon meets a doctor, Miranda Mossi, who is dealing with breast cancer, and with whom he becomes romantically involved. Concurrently, Marty is reexamining the Catholic Church, which he has all but left behind, working to reconcile with his siblings and daughter, and continuing his journalistic career with challenging investigative assignments despite the changes brought on by the “corporatization” of the news business.
Haslam handles these varying trajectories gracefully and manages to maintain interest in all of them. Of particular note are the church issues. Marty is not only re-finding his place in the Catholic Church; he is dealing with Catholic traditionalists in the persons of several parishioners and his ex-wife, who has joined a conservative Catholic cult, and he is also investigating a pedophile scandal in his diocese. But these ultimately pale in comparison to the life and death struggles that are the primary concerns of Marty and Miranda. As these characters face their own mortality, they also encounter the deaths of family members and friends in a series of poignant and true-to-life episodes.
In the end, Grace Period becomes an examination of how life, in all its variety, is ultimately a prologue to just one thing; but the manner in which Haslam’s characters take on their challenges, illnesses, and circumstances is both inspirational and instructive for all of us on our common journey. Whether that journey occurs in California, Kentucky, or any other place, Grace Period, with its thoughtful demeanor and journalistic attention to detail, exudes a sense that we are not in this alone and that there is hope beyond death and that, foremost, it is how we make our way through life that defines us for ourselves and those we love.
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