Introduction

Owner of a small African-American bookshop, Miss Cozy has an unique gift: Customers who walk through her door rarely leave without a book that speaks directly to their life. But when Josephine--"Fina"--and Ross arrive in search of an obscure, unpublished manuscript written by a slave woman, Miss Cozy knows that all her visions have been leading her to this magical day.

Yet Miss Cozy has no intention of selling the manuscript--no matter the price. So she offers Fina and Ross an alternative. They can read it together at the store. It was not what they hoped for, but their interest in the extraordinary love story is about as strong as their uncanny attraction for one another . . . one they both sense runs much deeper than a kiss. In the course of a few days, Fina and Ross realize that this powerful book has special meaning for the two of them--and that the path to their shared future may be linked to something that happened more than a century ago. . . .


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Editorial Review

Miss Cozy Brown, proprietor of a bookstore that specializes in rare and hard-to-find African American titles, goes to sleep one night knowing that something magical is about to happen. She finds herself drawn again to the yellowed manuscript that her grandmother bequeathed to her, Children of Grace, a slave narrative by a woman healer who died long before abolition. Despite its unsparing accounts of cruelty and abuse, hope shimmers from its pages, and the book can only be described as a love story with prophetic overtones, much like Redemption Song. It closes with the promise that slavery will end--the author of the manuscript, Iona, reads the future in the stars--but that true freedom will only come later. The next morning, as Miss Cozy suspected, two strangers are waiting for Black Images to open. They both need a special book, something life-transforming, and their hands fall at the same time on Children of Grace. Miss Cozy glances up as the couple approaches the counter. She "watched these two, as she'd watched so many others. She knew that they had no idea how their lives were going to be affected. Other folks had come to her shop thinking that they had been led to the bookstore because of their own intuition. But she knew better. This was her purpose, her calling: to help others unfold the chapters of their lives by reading between someone else's lines."

Some of what happens to Fina and Ross when Miss Cozy takes them under her wing will not surprise readers. But as they leaf through Children of Grace together, drawing strength from the story, they uncover Iona's "Recipe of Life," with its powerful and remarkably personal message. In her fictional debut, Bertice Berry has written a modern-day fairy tale and a hymn of praise to literature's redemptive power. --Regina Marler

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