Due to the highly dynamic network topology, it is a challenge to design the fault-tolerant routing protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) deployed in applications such as wildlife monitoring, battlefield surveillance and health monitoring. The fault tolerance in WSN is a critical issue for improved reliability but is constrained due to faults in hardware and communication. Faults may be due to link failure, node failures, battery drainage, environmental hazards, asymmetric links, imperfection in hardware or software, misplacement of sensor nodes etc. The proposed Efficient Fault Detection and Recovery (EFDR) scheme for WSNs using the virtual grid is an efficient fault tolerant strategy. In case of grid node failure, an alternate node within the zone is selected to forward the data and data delivery continues through the same path. If entire zone fails, an alternate shortest path is established. During selection and path modification, recovery node buffers data in its local storage to avoid any data loss. Data delivery resumes again upon confirmation of alternate path. The results of the simulation show that the efficiency of EFDR-WSN is better than the existing schemes.