{"product_id":"the-grace-that-keeps-this-world-isbn-9780307238023","title":"The Grace That Keeps This World","description":"Gary and Susan Hazen—high school sweethearts married for many years, born and bred in the Adirondack community of Lost Lake—live a simple and honest life and have instilled values in their two grown sons by example. But despite their efforts, Gary senses that his sons are starting to pull away and can’t help but feel he is at fault. His younger son, Kevin, has ambitions that extend far beyond the snowy edges of their small town. And his elder, Gary David, so fears disappointing his father that he is keeping an important part of his life secret.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Grace That Keeps This World \u003c\/i\u003eis a story about family, community, and the shared values that underlie and sustain human relationships. And ultimately, it is a tale of profound loss, human fallibility, and the love—romantic, neighborly, or familial—that can sometimes blur our line of vision.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Book Sense pick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIncludes a new essay by the author and a preview chapter of his forthcoming novel, \u003ci\u003eCotton Song\u003c\/i\u003e.“Acompelling first novel about love and rivalry in the adirondacks builds toward a shattering conclusion.” —\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like some modern-day version of a Greek tragedy . . . a chorus of narrators . . . moves this story . . . slowly and beautifully [toward] an indelible disaster. . . . This is, after all, a story about a man forced to expand his moral imagination, and in the end it inspires the same sympathy from us.” —\u003ci\u003eWashington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A beautifully drawn, tragic novel about fathers and sons—and the bonds of community.” —\u003ci\u003eAtlanta Journal Constitution\u003c\/i\u003eTom Bailey is the author of \u003ci\u003eCrow Man\u003c\/i\u003e, a collection of short stories, and \u003ci\u003eA Short Story Writer’s Companion\u003c\/i\u003e, and the editor of \u003ci\u003eOn Writing Short Stories\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives with his wife and three children in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the creative writing program at Susquehanna University. This is his first novel.Gary Hazen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe dark green Jeep Cherokee with the yellow-and-gold D.E.C. police  seal on its door turns off the log road, bumping the rut, and powers  up into the cut's landing. It's my younger son, I expect,  nineteen-year-old, blond Kevin, who promised me he'd be here by noon,  home from school for the weekend to help us get in the last of this  wood. But it's that new lady environmental conservation officer,  Josephine Roy, always busy scouting around our North Country, who's  somehow managed to find us at work out here on this tiny  twenty-four-acre private parcel inside of Hamilton County's  blue-lined million-acre part of the park.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's past lunch, after 1:00, and when I see who it is, who it isn't,  the Stihl 034 in my hands grumbles, and I return to my work. Rocking  the blade of the chain saw back, I give it the juice, slice forward,  the honed sharpness singing into the wood. Chips spit past the  goggles that mask my glasses. You can't be too careful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eKevin's brother, my older son, dark, curly-headed Gary David, stands  behind me steadying the trunk of the tree-sized limb, but hustles  around to the front at the end of my cut to ease the log's falling,  helping not to let it pinch the blade. Forced to work the jobs of two  men, he catches the log as it falls, before it can drop, lopped off  into the snow, and turns and tosses it on top of the mounding pile  sinking the springs of our rusted old, red and white, half-ton F250  Ford. He then steps quickly back around me again to steady the limb  for the next cut--right where I need him, when I need him, no waiting  around. And there's no time to wait. We've got wood to get in--always  I can hear Kevin say, being smart, now that he's a college man, he's  always being smart--there's always work to be done.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTrouble is, this morning we woke to another two-inch dusting of snow,  and gun season starts next Saturday. We're hot in a race against the  coming North Country cold, caught between a rock and a hard place of  the dual necessities of getting in this waste of good wood before the  big snows begin and bagging our limit of deer to help us make it  through one of these no-fooling winters again. Both Kevin and Gary  David know the importance of these two needs because I brought up  both my boys to know them. The way we choose to live we have no  choice. We have to work when the working's good, not when we want to.  If we want to be warm and eat, that is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor us deer season's not a matter of mounting a staring head or  congratulating ourselves over a rack of horns. For us hunting's as  crucial as surrounding every inch of spare space under our extrawide  porch and eaves with carefully cut, split, and cured wood--never  imagining, not even able to imagine nor capable of comprehending in  the blistering chain-saw heat of summer, that we could ever in twelve  straight hard winters use all we've stacked, and then and again be  stumped equally as incredulous every May when we have to scrabble up  the last skinny sticks and shavings of bark to heat up the freezing  kitchen at 5:00 a.m. This one single and unforgiving truth, out of  which the responsibility I'm speaking of was born: that it's already  time to start the dragging and sawing and splitting again that very  same afternoon if we're going to be ready for the first freeze come  September. It's all about living up here--surviving--and so far as  I'm concerned there's no difference between the two, but it's a huge  difference between us Hazens and other folks who don't know or have  any idea at all about the cold.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOfficer Roy parks in the clearing and climbs out of her shiny-new  Jeep. The vehicle is fully equipped with red bar lights and two shiny  silver spotlights above each sideview, antenna for the radio, and a  shotgun resting on the rack against the Plexiglas that cages off the  tan leather back seats. She starts up the slope toward us, carefully  picking her way through the maze of sheared stumps and left limbs.  Before this block of trees got singled out to be felled, their  reaching limbs held up a cathedral-like, beamed canopy, a forest  ceiling of hallowed hemlock. Now the clear-cut, crowded with the  aftermath ugliness of stumps, the forest floor churned by the turning  treads of the skidders that dragged out the logs, looks like a hot  spot where we might have got ourselves dropped, a war zone--the  blasted jungles where I served my hitch in Vietnam--a hell of a  place, for sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe massacre happened right here at our feet, the bodies of hundreds  of hemlocks hacked up, every single limb lopped. The valuable trunks  were carted off on the flatbeds of the heavy logging trucks with the  name Pollon Enterprises slanted in red, white, and blue down the  doors. Pollon Enterprises is owned by Armound Pollon. His crew of  Upper Lake Frenchmen came in here to do the job I refused to. They  simply left behind the remains, the scraps they couldn't make \"real  money\" on, thousands of limbs toppled over each other, in every  twisted position, unlikely as they fell. The only good news in the  wake of this slaughter is that these left limbs won't go to waste,  not if I have anything to say about it. Waste not, want not was my  father's motto.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI bump the safety bar against my hip, and the sudden silence rings  out even louder than the high whining of the saw. Gary David looks up  at me and then follows my gaze down the slope. Into that ringing  silence, I stand, arching against the growing stiffness in my lower  back. I've reached the age I can remember my father reaching when he  needed me, the son he'd raised. I take the blade guard Gary David is  waiting to hand me and slide it on, leave the heft of the saw between  my feet. I rest my goggles on top of my head and swipe the sweat off  my face with the sleeve of my mackinaw.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Officer Roy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mr. Hazen,\" she says, looking up at me as she crests the knoll, a  touch out of breath. It's a steep climb. She's wearing mirrored  aviator sunglasses, and she flashes past me to silver her eyes at my  son.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Gary David.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJosephine Roy acts years older than she looks. I'd read in the Lost  Lake Gazette that she graduated from college the spring before last  before spending a summer at the Academy learning to become an ECO.  Now she's been here almost a year, the rookie officer in our woods.  She and my Gary David must be about the same age, twenty-four or so,  though Officer Roy appears more mature. It's not her face, smooth and  girlish milk-white skin, untouched as yet like my Gary David's by  years of summer-fall-winter-spring winds and rains and snow and sun,  by the experience of caring for things she feels she must protect and  sometimes can't--though looking around this clearing might start to  etch a line or two on her. It's her uniform, I guess.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOfficer Roy's got on her usual getup, a dark green shirt and  standard-issue, pressed pants, with black stripes down the legs, her  earned Eagle Scout-like Adirondack Park patch, the brass belt buckle,  buffed shiny, and a 9-mm Glock pistol strapped to her waist, clean  mud boots, and her Smokey-the-Bear hat with the tight chin strap that  she wears angled down just right, sporting her authority. Her dark  hair is cut short. Sunglasses hide her baby blue eyes from us, but  she can't powder over the mess of freckles bridging her nose that  make her look like a kid who ought to have her picture on the back of  a cereal box. Though she's petite, the last two giant strides she  takes before she sets her hands on her holster in front of us make  her seem bigger, a mighty mite--sure, her mouth set stretched  straight across, determined. There's never been any doubt about how  seriously Officer Roy takes her job, all business about the weight of  being an armed ECO in our woods. But I made sergeant during my tour,  and a good rule of thumb I learned for myself is to be wary of all  badged or ranked authority, whether they act friendly or not. Officer  Roy puts me in mind of that sort of eager, fresh-faced, young  officer, first lieutenant type on whom I often had to stake my life  and the lives of my men. She appears to be in charge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne thing's for sure, the new ECOs like Roy are a different breed  than the old game wardens like Brad Pfeiffer used to be. Brad was  first and foremost a woodsman, an avid hunter himself. ECOs, as  they're officially called these days, are trained ready to act more  like troopers--they go through shotgun, rifle, and stick  certification as well as evasive driving, DWI, and drug detection.  Similar to the sorts of officers who get hired and specially trained  to work for the State Highway Patrol, who pull you over to give you a  ticket and never even smile at the tough luck of having gotten caught  speeding, no talking to them about how fast you were going or why,  the law to an ECO like Roy is something written down as a straight  ordinance or code and not subject to compromise or one lick of common  sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne day this past spring I emerged empty-handed from a twelve-hour  day hunting turkey deep in the woods only to find Officer Roy had  left me her calling card of an orange traffic violation tucked under  my windshield wiper, even though I was parked on the incline of a  logging switchback miles from a paved public road. My inspection  sticker had lapsed one month!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBrad Pfeiffer was a game warden up here for thirty-seven years, and  when Brad passed by the truck of a hunter he knew, he kept going. A  hunter's reputation mattered back when. Not anymore. Officer Roy  couldn't care less about anyone's hard-won reputation of being a  conscientious hunter in these woods. She'd as soon give me a citation  as she would Lamey Pierson, who is a convicted poacher. Officer Roy  does the busywork of checking up on everyone's licenses and inked  tags, including our own, though in my estimation we'd all be better  served up here if she saved that sort of thing for when the weekend  blasters from downstate come carpooling up to our North Country to  turn the first day of gun season into a shooting gallery, the  carnival for the killing they think of as fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I won't keep you,\" she says right off. \"I know how busy you are. I  just have a few questions I'd like to ask.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Go ahead,\" I say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Are you all set for the opening of gun season next Saturday? Do you  have your licenses?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Of course.\" I shrug. \"We've had ours. Since March.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI'm joking. We bought our licenses last Saturday like most everyone  else, the year's hunting license good from October 1. You have to buy  them direct from Mabel Dix at Town Hall, and she doesn't sell  licenses early and never has. With Officer Roy's rule-book mind,  these are facts I know she's more than well aware of, but Officer Roy  acts as if I'm playing it straight, as if she's taken me at my word  and what I say can and will be used against me. And then without even  looking at Gary David, she asks me, \"Are both of your sons going?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Unless you know something I don't!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt this line of questioning, I can't help but grin over my shoulder  at my older son, but Gary David's gone busy craning his neck around,  looking everywhere he can, at the mash of snow and leaves under our  feet, the close, graying sky, the trees. He coughs into his fist.  He's acting so antsy, he makes me glance around, feeling itchy myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOfficer Roy hasn't looked away. She crosses her arms, still focused  on me. And then she points the question of it straight at my chest  and pulls the trigger, point-blank: \"And your wife, Susan?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI nod. \"Sure,\" I say.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She took the hunter safety course and bought a license last year?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Yes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And the year before that?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"No. That's why she took the safety course last year. It was her  first year out.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Her first hunt, and she took a buck?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Not bad, huh? A hundred-and-sixty-pound eight-point.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Not bad at all.\" It's Officer Roy's turn to nod now, her bottom lip  pushed out, and then she says, a series of statements disguised as  questions, her thinking out loud to herself, trying to pin me down:  \"But last year was her first year? She never took a license to tag a  buck when Brad Pfeiffer was game warden? Now, I wonder why that is?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thumb back at tall, gangly Gary David. \"Well, Officer Roy, another  buck in the freezer makes a big difference when you have grown sons  like this one still living at home to feed.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOfficer Roy uncrosses her arms and hooks her thumbs through her belt  loops, listening down at her boots. When she looks up, she says, \"I  just wanted to make sure I had the number of licenses right. Before  Brad retired as warden you only bought three licenses and filled  three tags, but since I started last season, you've purchased four  licenses and filled four buck tags.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe goes silent, thinking, and then she says: \"You all were good  friends, weren't you, you and Brad?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that's when Gary David clears his throat and pipes up out of  nowhere, surprising all of us, most of all, I imagine, himself: \"You  know we take our hunting pretty seriously, Officer Roy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe lights her eyes on him then, and a ray of sun catches the  mirrored lenses and bulbs brightly as if she's flashed a photograph  to book us, me and my older son left standing in the wreck of shoved  snow and mud surrounded by the aftermath stumped devastation of the  clear-cut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I know you do,\" she says. \"I respect that. But as serious hunters I  know you know the law as well as I do: one buck per person, one  person per tag, and you can't fill in someone else's tag. That's the  law.\" She sets her hands on her holster again. \"I guess I wasn't  aware that Susan hunted. I thought she had a reputation around Lost  Lake as more of a gardener.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well,\" I say and shrug, try a grin. \"Susan is a Hazen, Officer Roy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOfficer Roy stretches her lips back at me without managing to  actually smile. \"I know,\" she says.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301085237477,"sku":"NP9780307238023","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307238023.jpg?v=1767739609","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-grace-that-keeps-this-world-isbn-9780307238023","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}