Grace Before the Fall

Grace Before the Fall is a reminder that every girl has a little Joan of Arc in her wheelhouse. It is the time of the hostage crisis in Iran, and in New York City, it is long before the fall of the towers, just before AIDS has found itself a name, although young men are mysteriously dying, and Grace Rosinbloom is inheriting their furniture. In Geri Lipschultz’s virtual love letter to the metropolis, Grace—a former actor, a former grad student, currently a civil servant by default—becomes a lover with a mission, an accidental activist whose search for love and meaning opens up doors to her dreamworld. Here is a picaresque novel that veers into magic realism as it enters the mind of a woman called upon to take a stand. Although set in pre-9/11 NYC, the novel's concerns still hold: environmental corruption, the threat of nuclear war, the rise of whistle blowing, and cyber hacking.

“Just imagine magical realism meets Alice in Wonderland.”

From the Foreword by John Irving, author of numerous works, including A Prayer For Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, and Queen Esther (Simon & Schuster, November 2025)