For the most part, there was nothing particularly unusual about Jean Potter s life. Going right to work after graduating from high school, she spent most of her career as an executive assistant in several large New York-based companies. In fact, she was working for the managing director of Bank of America in its offices on the eighty-first floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

By the Grace of God is Jean s story from her upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, to her jobs as assistant to several high-level executives, to her courtship and marriage to a New...