Beneficence

A family’s only hope is that love is stronger than grief.

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After a sudden and terrible loss, how does a loving family find their way back to the goodness and peace they once shared? Reviewers and readers have called this literary historical novel “hauntingly beautiful,” “a masterpiece of compassion,” “a page-turner and an artistic triumph.”

Written by a masterful storyteller, this is a book that illuminates the journey we make through grief to healing.

In the midst of a nearly perfect life, Doris Senter is thankful but wary. “We can’t ever know what will come,” she says. When an unimaginable tragedy turns the family of five into a family of four, everything the Senters held faith in is shattered. The family is consumed by sorrow and guilt. Slowly, the surviving family members find their way to forgiveness—of themselves and of each other.

Few writers know the human heart and the burden of grief as New York Times bestselling author Meredith Hall (Without a Map). This is a radiant novel of goodness and love—both its gifts and its obligations—that will stay with readers long after the last page. With a rare tenderness and compassion, Beneficence shows broken hearts becoming whole as this family reclaims their love and peace.

“People stay together, fall apart, come back together, altered. It is a book about work, about grief, about thick ongoing love. Hall’s prose is hewn, sinewy, with moments of electrifying beauty and grace.”—Boston Globe

“One of the best books I've ever read.”—Simon Van Booy

“As organically as it traveled to heartbreak, Beneficence progresses to the place of wisdom that lies beyond it, where we learn that a home is part of the ‘vast world of innocence and harm,’ not an island beyond it.”—Wall Street Journal

“A modern American masterpiece.”—Dani Shapiro

“If the word ‘luminous’ didn’t already exist, you’d have to invent it to describe Meredith Hall’s radiant new novel Beneficence.”—Richard Russo

“These voices from the past speak so clearly to our time, at a moment when many of us wonder whether we’ll lose the things that we consider blessings....Beneficence is a quiet but steady book, one that echoes ancient and important rhythms.”—Washington Post

“A quiet gem...hard to put down.”—Library Journal

“Hauntingly beautiful, emotionally devastating, and infused with great compassion.”—Kim Barnes

“With wisdom and compassion, Meredith Hall writes about the capacity for atonement. Goodness. Generosity to see deeply, to live through fear and pain on your journey toward the awareness of splendor.”—Ursula Hegi