"Readers will want to keep Gracious Plenty at hand so they can open it again and again. Its meditations, poems, and aphorisms invoke the Bible and Faulkner's old verities. Sharp similes ('like a drop of sweat on the tongue from Golgotha') and wise sayings ('The currency of life is not money, but time') are apt for our times. Braswell offers shades of Walt Whitman ('Plant me beneath the trees deep into the soil I came from') and a tinge of Will Rogers ('Sooner or later the truth will set you free / But not before it beats the hell out of you'). In short, this collection offers balm and omens for 'our busy-bee world.' We should read it often and listen to it."
--Roberta Teague Herrin, author of Appalachian Homilies

"The author's words are a call, not only to let go and let God, but to seize upon the plenty, where brokenness, tenderness, and even despair can be epiphanies calling us to change, to action, and in the end, contentment."
--Patrick O'Doherty, author of Breadcrumbs: Hope and Other Complications, from the foreword

"This small book is a gem. Meditative essays and free verse poems address questions we all face in life. In that way, this book is a kind of pilgrim's notebook. Gracious Plenty and his earlier book, The Memory of Grace, are excellent traveling companions. They offer us hope and teach us virtues. They help us see and name transforming and luminous moments in life and unexpected moments of Grace."
--J. M. Ryan, retired professor, Vanderbilt University

"In Gracious Plenty, Michael Braswell offers help and hope for challenges we face in our lives. Truth seeking and gratitude responding to grace, as well as the distinction between worldly and heavenly wisdom, are prominent themes in this collection that can serve as a daily devotional or a conversation companion for small group study."
--Bill Connolly, pastor