About Grace

A static character, Sandy Sheeler Winkler enters Winkler’s life first through a dream and then through a slow-burning affair that changes both their lives. Sandy is bored with her life and looking for excitement when she meets Winkler. In addition, Sandy’s desire to have a child might be a motivation for her seeking out a relationship with Winkler. Her true motivations, however, are muddied by his perception of her. Winkler sees her as a woman to admire, the first and only woman he has known intimacy with, and therefore a woman above reproach.

Sandy appears willing to use anyone she can to get what she wants. She has big dreams for her life that aren’t being fulfilled; therefore, she welcomes Winkler’s intrusion into her life. The thrill of an affair appears to open a door for her, allowing her to explore some of the hopes and dreams she put aside when she settled into married life with Herman. When she becomes pregnant, Sandy keeps Winkler at arm’s length, never discussing the options with him. Not until Winkler devises a plan for the two of them to leave Alaska does Sandy welcome him back into her life and accept him as a partner in the pregnancy.

Her life with Winkler is colored by his perception of her, given that the story unfolds from his perspective; thus, it’s unclear what Sandy’s feelings for Winkler truly are. Nonetheless, getting married to him is her idea, suggesting a level of commitment on her part that transcends the boredom she felt in her first marriage. This is underscored by Sandy never returning to her marriage with Herman, even after Winkler leaves, and continuing to use his name until her death. However, Sandy might have become so disillusioned with marriage that she chose not to enter into a committed relationship a third time.

While the novel doesn’t fully reveal Sandy’s motivations due to Winkler’s inexperienced view of women and relationships, her actions give some idea of those motivations. Her inability to support Winkler after he confesses the dream that warns of Grace’s death isn’t necessarily a gauge of her feelings for Winkler but a hint of her own fear for her daughter’s safety. Sandy’s refusal to speak to Winkler on the phone after the flood suggests a depth of anger that inspires her to lash out at Winkler by refusing to tell him of Grace’s fate. A year later, that anger is still evident in Sandy’s package to Winkler that tells him not to return to her. This anger is so intense that it could only come from a place of equally intense feeling, suggesting that Sandy loved Winkler and the life they built together. Additionally, her illness may have contributed to her decision. When Grace later tells Winkler that Sandy asked her to write to him, it’s evident that Sandy desired forgiveness, closure, and understanding at the end of her life.

Winkler’s daughter, Grace Winkler, is his primary motivation throughout the novel. Grace is only an infant when she’s first introduced to the plot. However, she plays an important role in the plot as Winkler’s constant motivation. Grace’s safety becomes his primary concern, as often happens for new parents. The novel takes this tendency to extremes because of Winkler’s ability to dream things before they happen. Winkler leaves everything he has behind to protect Grace yet fears that he acted too late and lives his life in the pall of this theory. When he’s given hope that Grace could be alive, it reinvigorates Winkler, and he immediately resolves to find her, revealing once again that Grace is all that motivates him.

As a play on Winkler’s sense that time goes through cycles and repetition, the plot involves multiple Grace Winklers. When he meets the first adult Grace, he’s told that his journey won’t have an ending. This fails to motivate him and instead makes him feel as though his quest is so vast that it’s meaningless. It also leads Winkler to make the same leap of logic that caused him to lose his daughter in the first place, assuming that she’s dead. The many Graces he meets each show him the possibility of his daughter’s life. However, the last Grace leaves him injured and alone, symbolic of Winkler’s self-hatred and desire for punishment.

Winkler’s entire life revolves around whether Grace is safe, whether she’s alive, and whether she wants a relationship with him. Grace herself plays a relatively small part in this motivation because most of it plays out in Winkler’s head or in his actions, not hers. When the plot finally introduces Grace as his grown daughter, she’s a lot like her mother, a somewhat distant character whose motivations are clouded by Winkler’s perception of her.