GRAY is a viscerally lush, sometimes playful, and unflinching exploration of loss, divorce, midlife sexuality, and the search for fulfillment, even in the face of death.
Vera Mine has a big problem. An ordinary middle-aged white American woman, Vera is a realist, yet fragile: unable to sugarcoat and always fighting the demons that question what she sees, what needs to be done. Unknowingly, she wants to be a modern-day interpretation of the Greek Goddess Athena. However, unlike Athena, with her crown of flowers and natural ability to judge and take action, everything Vera sees around her is gray, never even slightly black or white. She struggles to speak up, change the course of events, and considers herself a coward. Vera surrounds herself with paralyzing clouds of Gray.
Vera Mine's father is dying. She sits beside his hospital bed and watches the parade of people come and go. Only a few are his travelers, the people he holds close as he passes on. Faced with questions of meaning and mortality, Vera reflects on her life and the travelers she has encountered on the way. Finally, she understands what she, and people like her, need to experience a satisfying life and a good death, or as good as a death can be. After her father's funeral and still mending, Vera surprises her friends and family when she sets out with great gusto on a mission to fulfill her newly realized needs and makes her home on the honeyed Greek island of Naxos.
In a place where everyone is a stranger, Vera finally has the opportunity to look inward and explore her creativity. She forges connections and is treated as an honored guest by a local family, who become part of her everyday life. But the tranquility doesn't last. She immediately falls for Demetri, the island demigod, and finds herself caught up in hurtful lies and shocking secret plans that threaten to upend the idyllic island town. Soon she will be confronted with a choice to remain, once again, on the sidelines or make a judgment and find the courage within herself to act.
In her exciting debut novel, Roy weaves a brilliant narrative latticework in striking prose with measured surprises of lovely lyricism. The narration takes readers on an intimate ride in and out of Vera's thoughts as she confronts and attempts to understand death, doubt, her cowardice, judgment, her midlife sexuality, and the amazing power of humility.
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