FICTION

PORTRAIT OF MARY by Nikki Grimes (Harcourt Brace: $15.95; 116 pp.) Nikki Grimes, author of several children’s books including a biography of Malcolm X, began this project as a series of poems about the life of the mother of Jesus Christ. The poems became a theater piece that was performed for church audiences and coffee houses, and finally took the form of this narrative. A combination of Scripture and storytelling, in the end this is another story of child loss and faith. Mary, picture of grace and sacrifice, believes in the visions and dreams that she and her husband must act upon; marrying in spite of the pregnancy, moving to Egypt to escape the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem, hearing the proclamations from prophets and wise men on the fate of their son. Of course, there’s never enough detail in this story, no amount of pomegranates or wet hay or lentil stew will drag it below the level of myth, but it breathes life into the story to be able to picture Mary’s daily life and her hopes and fears for her son (“Why, he would be the best carpenter in all Jerusalem, if Joseph had his way”). In the Notes and Acknowledgments, Grimes describes the few places where she played with history and myth and Scripture--most importantly, a section in which the risen Christ visits his mother. “I cannot imagine,” writes Grimes as a mother who has lost a child, “that Jesus would have visited his friends one final time . . . and not have done as much for his beloved mother.”