Grace Notes follows an anxious young man who desperately wants to understand why he feels disconnected from himself and others, and whether faith can offer him a place where he truly belongs. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My life. This book started off as a memoir then morphed into fiction when I realized adding some spice, i.e. fiction, made for a tastier dish, i.e., story. Calling it autofiction is appropriate.
Music plays an important role throughout the book, and the title Grace Notes carries both musical and spiritual meaning. What does the title represent to you personally?
We are, all of us, grace notes in God’s Symphony.
Is a grace note essential to the piece of music or expendable?
That’s the tension I try to maintain throughout the book until its climax in Jerusalem. The tension is established with the conversation between Adam and Jerry on a dorm rooftop when Adam decides that grace notes are expendable, therefore life is meaningless and Jerry’s counterpoint conversation with Andy, who has just attempted suicide, and Jerry advocates that grace notes are essential, so encourages Andy to play his note with all his heart.
Rog, Barbara, and several other mentors leave a lasting impression on Jerry’s life. Were any of these characters inspired by people who helped shape your own journey?
Yes, absolutely. A few years ago, I finally mailed Rog—I was not able to track down an address for Barb, and they had divorced after they left Tenafly—a thank you letter for how much he had really saved my life and introduced me to a world grounded in unconditional love.
Is there a lasting message you hope readers will carry with them after finishing Grace Notes?
In a word: hope. Life can get better. Life can be good. And encourage readers to follow the path with their name and only their name on it towards knowing and accepting who they truly are. It truly is a journey worth taking, always hearing Joseph Campbell’s quote: The privilege of a lifetime is to be who you are. And when you find who you are, there you will find God as well.
As James Baldwin wrote, “You don’t have a home until you leave it.” This isn’t your grandma’s faith journey. It’s Christianity with the gloves off—blisteringly honest, irreverently soulful, and deeply human.
Grace Notes is a spiritual, coming-of-age epic. From a panic attack at a high school party to an emotional reckoning in Jerusalem, Jerry’s path to belief doesn’t follow tradition—it shatters it. Along the way, he stumbles through trauma, seminary, sex, activism, burnout, mysticism, and piano solos that speak when words fail. He loses the trail more than once, but never stops searching for home—spiritual, emotional, and physical.
Marked by raw confession, unexpected grace, and gut-punching moments of revelation, Grace Notes explores what it means to confront your past, embrace your brokenness, and find God in the places you least expect. For readers who are spiritual but skeptical, wounded but seeking, this is the story of how one man’s messy, aching search for belonging leads to belief and the home for which he has always yearned.
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