Grace Will Lead Us Home, Jennifer Berry Hawes
Grace Will Lead Us Home, Jennifer Berry Hawes
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Grace Will Lead Us Home
The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness

Author: Jennifer Berry Hawes

Narrator: Jennifer Berry Hawes, Karen Chilton

Unabridged: 12 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/04/2019


Synopsis

**Winner of the 2020 Audie Award for Best Non-Fiction**

"This audiobook achieves an exceptional performance of an important work on a difficult subject--mass murder and its aftermath." - AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award winner

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 * BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS PICK * OPRAH MAGAZINE SUMMER 2019 READING LIST SELECTION * NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE

This program includes an introduction read by the author.

A deeply moving work of narrative nonfiction on the tragic shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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 Roof’s massacre of nine innocents during their closing prayer horrified the nation. Two days later, some relatives of the dead stood at Roof’s 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 tragedy’s 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 massacre’s 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.

More praise for Grace Will Lead Us Home:

“Vividly rendered … [Hawes is] a writer with the exceedingly rare ability to observe sympathetically both particular events and the horizon against which they take place without sentimentalizing her subjects. Hawes is so admirably steadfast in her commitment to bearing witness that one is compelled to consider the story she tells from every possible angle.” — New York Times Book Review

"The great value of this book is that it tells the stories of the survivors and victims’ families on their own terms, in all of their humanity, while also showing us how Charleston's tortured history of racism and gun violence came together on that night in June.” — Gabrielle Union

“In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Jennifer Berry Hawes breathes poetry into tragedy to bring to life the epic grief that haunted a nation’s moral imagination...If white supremacy is ever to meet a death knell, this ringing endorsement of fallen yet redeemable humanity will echo loudly in our hearts.” — Michael Eric Dyson

About Jennifer Berry Hawes

Jennifer Berry Hawes writes for the Charleston-based Post and Courier, where she spent a decade covering religion and now works on a team that handles in-depth investigative reporting projects for the paper. Her work has won many honors including a Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award, a National Headliner Award, and a Dart Award for Journalism & Trauma. She lives in Charleston.Jennifer is the author of Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness.

About Karen Chilton

Karen Chilton is a multi-talented author, actor, and audiobook narrator, as well as a freelance writer, script writer, and librettist. She wrote the biography Hazel Scott about the trailblazing jazz pianist and coauthored I Wish You Love with legendary jazz vocalist Gloria Lynne. Her acting credits include It's Kind of a Funny Story and Half Nelson. She won a New Professional Theatre Writers award for her play Convergence and an Audiofile Golden Earphones Award for her narration of Karolyn Smardz Frost's I've Got a Home in Glory Land. She has also narrated Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and Jennifer Berry Hawes' Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sharon on November 05, 2023

Listened to Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness on audiobook. The narration by Karen Chilton is fabulous and the author, Jennifer Berry Hawes, does an incredible job describing the horrific murders at Charleston's Mother Emanuel AME......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on April 28, 2019

It was about fifteen years ago that a stranger came to church and after worship service was directed to the young adult Sunday School class. He sat quietly during the discussion. Then he spoke up, asking what the church believed about a divisive social issue. There was a stunned silence for a few se......more

Goodreads review by HR-ML on July 10, 2021

A powerful & emotional read. 4.5 stars. 12 church members attended the Weds night Bible class @ the historically black Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C. A quiet, thin, white guy, Dylann Roof, joined them. Unknown to them he was a white supremist packing a Glock pistol & magazines containing 88......more

Goodreads review by Paula on September 30, 2019

This book was difficult to read at times, but I'm so glad I did. It paints a beautiful, real picture of strength and grace in the face of horrific hate. The accounts of the events at Mother Emanuel and all that followed were eye-opening and gripping. I do wish the author had left out some of the int......more


Quotes

"In heartbreaking detail, this tour de force of reportage contrasts the goodness and bravery of the victims with the actions of the dead-eyed killer on a mission of hate." —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Fresh and compelling… Hawes captures candid scenes deftly. People are drawn with insight and depth, and the book’s pace clips along like that of a cliff-hanger or mystery.” —Charleston Magazine

"Hawes is a poised writer and a patient observer... She lands the book with moral force and great feeling." —The New York Times

"Hawes is a talented storyteller, recounting every phase of this saga while focusing on the individual tales of survivors and family members. At once horrifying and inspiring, engaging and thought-provoking, this is a definitive must-read about the Charleston tragedy." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A groundbreaking, accessible work of investigative reporting." —Library Journal (starred review)

"With empathy and kindness, Hawes bears witness to one of the most horrific incidents in recent American history." —Booklist (starred review)

“In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Jennifer Berry Hawes breathes poetry into tragedy to bring to life the epic grief that haunted a nation’s moral imagination. Written like a novel, observed like a sage, and narrated with scholarly rigor, Hawes’ stirring account of a dark night in Charleston shows how it seared the American conscience while forcing lionized politicians to find courage, and tin man religious leaders to find a heart, for the people they both claimed to serve. If white supremacy is ever to meet a death knell, this ringing endorsement of fallen yet redeemable humanity will echo loudly in our hearts.” —Michael Eric Dyson

"The great value of this book is that it tells the stories of the survivors and victims’ families on their own terms, in all of their humanity, while also showing us how Charleston's tortured history of racism and gun violence came together on that night in June." —Gabrielle Union

"Jennifer Berry Hawes has written a remarkable document on one of the most horrific acts of this young century. But it's her ability to connect a series of carefully-observed scenes—the difference in size and location of two monuments, a Republican governor's story of racism (and the state representative who took out his hearing aid in response), a dialogue between a husband and wife about the biblical Parable of the Sower—that gives this book its power. Together, they evoke the racially charged soil on which this tragic event took place and remind us of the cost of failing to challenge romantic notions of the South's racial history." —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.


Awards

  • Audie Award Winner
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year