Tyler’s wife has only been dead for a few months when he also loses his job at GM, one of countless casualties from Detroit’s collapsed auto industry. Now a widower, his son Robbie not yet two, Tyler grasps for a lifeline as his relationships with women, other men, and his own sense of self all come under scrutiny and pressure. Support comes—sometimes unwanted or uninvited—from unexpected places.
Jon F. Harmon’s SCRAPS OF GRACE takes its cues from writers like Andre Dubus, casting an honest but compassionate eye on often-unlikable men who know they are, by many measures, failures, but who nevertheless struggle to improve for the sake of their loved ones—even if they don’t quite know how. Tyler is very effectively introduced leering over his teen babysitter, and his stereotypically masculine interior life inhabits a cul-de-sac of women, cars, and sports. However, SCRAPS OF GRACE steadily pulls Tyler into the path of more emotionally intelligent people (women and people of color, in particular), who are able to help him contextualize and process both his grief for his dead wife and his fears about his own failings. This is a deeply conventional narrative—a cast of characters undertakes the emotional labor of improving a mediocre white man—but its thoughtfully chosen historical setting, convictions, and evident love for people succeed at both intriguing and moving the reader.
Structurally, the text gains a great deal from its 1990 Detroit setting: characters converse about the failings of communism in the USSR, for instance, while simultaneously experiencing the failings of capitalism in the USA. Tyler only knows a daunting, conservative model of masculinity in which his capitalist production is the root of all self-worth (finding a job after a period of unemployment is equated with “being someone again”). SCRAPS OF GRACE ultimately takes an ambivalent stance on these issues; typical conservative American values are effectively re-inscribed by the end, rather than interrogated or rejected—but the text also makes no secret of the soul-crushing weight inherent in trying to force a human being into such strictures. This last, however, ties insightfully back to the core theme of grace. Tyler is largely afflicted by things out of his control (the death of his wife, the death of the auto industry, a random car accident), and this lack of agency can be frustrating for a reader. But grace itself is inherently unearned, like all of the good that comes Tyler’s way—framing him like a modern-day Job.
Tackling some weighty issues, SCRAPS OF GRACE also benefits from a fluid prose style punctuated with moments of clarity and beauty. Tyler’s car-obsessed brain deploys some arresting (and laugh-out-loud funny) descriptive language, as when a Chevy Caprice Classic is painted as “an ugly whale abortion of [a] car.” At times, the description borders on synesthetic, like when Tyler steps onto a factory floor with its “familiar blast of hot noise.” But the key is a fine ear for rhythm and the sonic qualities of words, elevating even straightforward thoughts like, “Her green eyes glow intensely now.” The novel is worth reading for these nuggets of particularly excellent prose. For readers who enjoy a conventional narrative done very well, SCRAPS OF GRACE more than delivers.
A detailed period piece set in a crucial moment in modern American history, Jon F. Harmon’s SCRAPS OF GRACE compassionately and movingly portrays an average American man struggling with the failures of contemporary models of masculinity.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader