Perspective of Can’t Buy Grace

BY CRAIG LAURENCE RICE

The contemporary relevance of this story and its setting are based on recent events and issues that have been magnified in this country due to the isolation and lockdown we have experienced in 2020 and 2021. In America today, a severe time of poverty is closing in, perhaps parallel or worse than the 30’s depression. Rural areas are now entering the age of the Rural Ghettos. People are sinking into depression and despair.

For many young people living in rural America the myth of the United States is clear-- the promise of a better future has been crushed. With its depressed economy and poverty, these youth feel the lack of opportunity in their bones. They are increasingly surrounded by lack of employment opportunities, poor health and medical care, slow suicides and early death. Many are scraping by on subsistence level jobs and welfare checks.  With little hope of getting out, alcohol and drug abuse are taking a larger harvest from this population every day. Others, like drowning men, are desperately snatching at anything or anybody that looks like a life preserver.

After the pandemic and the lockdown, when the welfare or relief checks stop or are not enough, the rise of drugs into rural America will rage further. The spread of Meth and Opium is getting worse.  Small towns cease to be like Mayberry and are becoming more like the South Bronx in the 80's.Can't Buy Grace is an effort to depict this coming reality. The main character Jen will face challenges, will do bad things for  good reasons, but he is willing to make sacrifices as a parent out of love for his child. 

In this story everyone is hungry for something, whether money, drugs, love, or peace. Aggressively hungry and dangerous--these feelings pulsate through the story. The people will do what they have to because everybody is feeling the pain of the last years and it has hardened them.  The last vestige of hope is hanging on a thin edge, and some people are discovering they have to take things into their own hands