Book Review: Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

My Rating:

4.5⭐️

“It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.”

This is how Frank Drum recalls the eventful summer of 1961. Frank, a young boy of thirteen growing up in New Bremen, Minnesota with his Juilliard-bound older sister Ariel, younger brother Jake , his WW2 veteran father who is a Minister and artistically inclined mother who shares her love and talent for music with her daughter. When the body of a young boy they know is found on the railroad tracks the whole town is left in shock, with speculation about the nature of his death.

Subsequent deaths, some closer to home than others, result in suspicion and finger pointing among the townspeople with hidden secrets and not-so-hidden bias coming to the surface. What follows is a chain of events that not only impacts the lives of Frank and his near and dear ones but also his perceptions of life and death, family, society, his faith and the world in general.

“My father used to quote the Greek playwright Aeschylus. “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

William Kent Krueger’s Ordinary Grace is a beautifully penned, profoundly moving story with a wonderful cast of characters with elements of small town drama, coming of age experiences and mystery. With simple but elegant prose the author touches upon themes of death, discrimination, sexual orientation, grief and loss, PTSD, faith and of course, grace. The author’s vivid description of a small town and the townspeople enriches the narrative making it possible to almost visualize the events as they take place . This is a slow paced novel but I never felt my attention wavering. I have to commend the author’s ability to voice the emotions of both the adults and the children without coming across as jarring or out of place.

“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”

I was enamored with William Kent Krueger’s writing after reading This Tender Land which was one of my favorite books of 2021. Many of my reader friends recommended Ordinary Grace and I cannot thank them enough.