City of Grace

Vinny Northrup is trying hard not to lose it. Seems Someone up there likes him. Or is out to get him. Or both. Maybe it's just the way his geeky mind works, detecting patterns in seemingly random events, or do the coincidences, the déjà vu, all the uncanny quirks of fate really add up to something? When he literally digs up buried treasure to win a magazine contest, he celebrates finishing graduate school with a year spent in France. Living on the cheap in the alpine city of Grenoble, one enchanted evening he sees a beautiful stranger across a crowded room. A wiz at deciphering complex puzzles, can this socially awkward "nice guy" figure out the enigma that is la femme? A little help here!

A slightly reformatted version of the author’s real-life experiences, City of Grace is part romance, part travelogue, part wistful memoire. Funny, touching, inspiring--but always quirky, this inaugural novel was a winning entry of the 2010 National Novel Writing Month.