
The contemplative understated tearjerker Grace Is Gone dramatizes the quiet crisis that befalls Stanley (John Cusack) a young Midwestern husband of a female marine stationed in Iraq & a father of two girls Suddenly & unexpectedly widowed when his wife Grace is killed on the battlefield Stanley cannot bring himself to share the devastating news with his two young daughters In lieu of speaking to them immediately about their mother's death Stanley internalizes his devastation & takes the girls on a road trip while he attempts to sort through a myriad of conflicted & tumultuous internal feelings about the war itself & contemplates how to break the shattering news Inevitably the road trip will end with Grace's funeral This film represents the brainchild of producerstar Cusack & writerdirector James C Strouse It began with Cusack's fury about the Bush administration's policy banning footage of caskets returning from the Iraq & Afghani wars & his desire to see those events played out onscreen in the lives of American citizens