"[Rick] would come back to California, pass the bar exam first time through and join the lucrative butter-slathered practice of her father's Newport firm, Shaw, Swine, Swill, Slime, and Turdlock, which is the way Emily usually thought of her father's partners. Rick did not think this funny at all. Quite the contrary. He reminded her that Shaw, Shine, Brill, Syme, and Turlock would enable the two of them to have a lovely, opulent Laguna Beach life where they would entertain lavishly..."

While I started the novel as decidedly not an Elvis fan, I have to admit that I am now ready to quote Elvis lyrics at the drop of a hat (it's all about Money, Honey) and I have a newborn respect for The King and his rise from poverty to performing more than 1000 shows in his final years. I can't help but admire someone who had that much rockin' and rollin' and crooning to give to live audiences. More than causing me to love Elvis, however, the Elvis part of the story caused me to consider the complexity of devotion — of how and why a person chooses to devote their life to another person or to a cause, or to a Rock 'n Roll icon, as in the strangely compelling case of Joyce Jackson.

You get the impression that Laura Kalpakian had a good time writing this novel, with all the richness of the Elvis world strewn throughout, and also playing with the acronyms that seem to creep in and take over in the social work vocabulary, as in: "The county has this program, the GGP, the Good Grades Program for AFDC mothers, and if you keep your grades up, the county pays your fees at SECC, St. Elmo City College."

Graced Land is by far the most polished, entertaining, and fully articulated of the three novels. I could read it again and, in fact, have enjoyed rereading particularly fabulous passages, such as Chapter 13, a streaming ode to passion, with its wonderfully placed refrain of Oh Burning Love sprinkled throughout.

The First Annual Soci Awards

The copy of Graced Land that I got out of my local public library had been checked out 18 times since its publication in 1992, for an average of 1.5 readers of the novel per year. While this may cause some to despair at how little literary interest there is in us, I say it's time for a positive reframe: Graced Land was actually the most-checked-out of the three books that I read for this article. At 1.5 readers a year, it's a comparative best-seller.