Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness (2019)By Jennifer Berry Hawes
Journalist Hawes takes the reader aside the lives of the 9 victims (and 3 survivors) of the Charleston Church shooting of June 17, 2015. Most well-known was Rev Clementa Pinckney, also a state senator, whose funeral speaker was President Obama. We meet Pinckney's widows Jennifer, and their two young daughters. We meet Felicia Sanders, who survived the shooting but lost her son Tywanza and 87-year-old Aunt Susie. All of Emanuel AME church's leaders have been killed and a new pastor, Norvel Goff, is assigned to lead the bereft church. Sadly, he is not interested in consoling the grieving families (and even stands up Felicia when she tries to see him). On another occasion, he refuses to let Felicia and the other adult survivor into the church building. When the church is deluged with donations, however, Goff fires the church's long time secretary who knows the church and its members, and instead hires new employees to open the envelopes, but there is no record-keeping and victims' families receive empty envelopes, torn open with no explanations. Felicia is introduced to the pastor of the mainly white Second Presbyterian Church, who warmly welcomes her and meets with her each week; eventually she finds a new home at Second Pres, while tourists fill the pews of Emanuel.
There is little new to learn of the killer Dylan Roof, a young loner who found white racism online and whose senseless act led to at least one positive outcome: the removal of the confederate flag, a symbol of oppression, from the state house in Columbia, an act in which the young governor, Nikki Haley, plays a part. At Roof's hearing, many of the victim's families stun a waiting world: rather than spew hate, they opt to forgive the young man or ask God to have mercy on him. The book concludes with the healing words of President Obama, when he addressed the congregation at Clem Pinckney's funeral, commending God's grace, and opting to lead the congregation in singing "Amazing Grace".
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