When a business venture goes sour, Charleston blue-bloodsBilly and Dee DeLoach uproot their family and move into the caretaker’s cottageon what was once the family plantation estate on Edisto Island. While the restof her family falls to pieces, DeVeaux struggles to sustain them through herreluctant help and her stubborn hope.

Before the bankruptcy, the family had a graceful home in ahistoric Charleston neighborhood. Country clubs, cotillions, childhood friends,and a close-knit church group. Now they’re living in a run-down cottage on anisland estate that is no longer in the family. DeVeaux has a restaurant job, acantankerous old truck, and mud on just about everything.

But something is wearing DeVeaux down. It's not living onthe island, which is actually kind of interesting. And it's not missing her oldfriends, who have developed an annoying fixation on boys. What really bothersDeVeaux is that being "ruined" has changed her dad into an ill-temperedjerk, and her mother just tiptoes around him. If the good Lord has a plan forsaving them, now might be a good time to start.

A gritty but gentle drawl of a story, Grace at Low Tide is atender and evocative portrait of a young girl embracing womanhood. With southernsociety as her backdrop, Beth Webb Hart paints for us a hard-luck familyscrabbling to find its heart again. It is a testimony to the small miracles oflove and loyalty--the gifts of grace that manage to keep us all afloat, even atour lowest ebb.