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Grace Will Lead Us Home
Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness | Jennifer Berry Hawes
4 posts | 4 read | 5 to read
"Hawes is a talented storyteller... this is a definitive must-read about the Charleston tragedy." Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A deeply moving work of narrative nonfiction on the tragic shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes. On June 17, 2015, twelve members of the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina welcomed a young white man to their evening Bible study. He arrived with a pistol, 88 bullets, and hopes of starting a race war. Dylann Roofs massacre of nine innocents during their closing prayer horrified the nation. Two days later, some relatives of the dead stood at Roofs hearing and said, I forgive you. That grace offered the country a hopeful ending to an awful story. But for the survivors and victims families, the journey had just begun. In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes provides a definitive account of the tragedys aftermath. With unprecedented access to the grieving families and other key figures, Hawes offers a nuanced and moving portrait of the events and emotions that emerged in the massacres wake. The two adult survivors of the shooting begin to make sense of their lives again. Rifts form between some of the victims families and the church. A group of relatives fights to end gun violence, capturing the attention of President Obama. And a city in the Deep South must confront its racist past. This is the story of how, beyond the headlines, a community of people begins to heal. An unforgettable and deeply human portrait of grief, faith, and forgiveness, Grace Will Lead Us Home is destined to be a classic in the finest tradition of journalism.
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JenniferEgnor
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The difference between this book and We Are Charleston, is, WAC tells you a lot about the historical connections; Grace, is much more personal and detailed, going closely into the lives of the families and the church as well. This happened in my city. It‘s now 2023 and our Republican legislators still refuse to pass a hate crime law in our state. There is a group of old Confederate loving men who try to fly their flags on Sunday mornings by the

JenniferEgnor battery. We have counter protestors who come to be the dissent. These same old men travel to Columbia, to the Statehouse once a year in the summer, to fly that flag. It is legal for them to do so. I say, we don‘t need that flag, or the Confederate and Segregationist monuments. We all know why they are still there. And it‘s shameful. SC has a long way to go. The sin and stain of slavery in my state lives on. 1y
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Leelee08
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I‘m on the Freshman Composition Committee within our English department, and we‘ve just started incorporating a book into our classes. They usually have to do with a social justice theme, and I‘m excited to start this one.❤️📖

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ElectricKatyLand
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I cried through most of this book. Providing a journalistic account of the Charleston massacre, Hawes' paints a detailed, devastating portrait of the victims, the survivors, and their families during the attack and the aftermath. A hard read but a worthwhile one.

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plemmdog
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I spent 4 years in Charleston during the 90s, and I‘m still coming to terms with my Carolina privileged white boyhood. Hawes does an excellent job here of portaying the victims and families, as well as the two survivors. Not surprisingly, she has a newspaper reporter‘s eye for human detail and a good story— her beat was actually the religion desk, when the tragedy occurred. A compelling and unsettling read.