Ordinary Grace
“The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.” ― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace
Set in a typical small town, New Bremen, Minnesota, where in 1961 Ice-cold root beers were disappearing from the shelves at Halderson's Drugstore's soda fountain, and Hot Stuff comic books were a staple on every barbershop magazine rack as the Twins played their inaugural season. It was an era of optimism and innocence for a nation led by a new, young president. Yet for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, it was a gloomy summer marked by frequent and varied visits from death, a natural occurrence, but also murder and suicide. Except for the murder and suicide, it reminded me of the small town I grew up in at about the same time in southern Wisconsin.
When tragedy unexpectedly strikes Frank's family, which includes his Methodist minister father, his passionate, artistic mother, his older sister, who is headed to Juilliard, and his wise-beyond-his-years younger brother, he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal. Frank is suddenly required to show a maturity and gumption beyond his years. Again I felt a similarity, in part, since I grew up in an extended family of Methodists, with a sister, two uncles, and aunt, and eight cousins (two of whom were the same age as me).
I found this book to be a profoundly compelling narrative of a youngster attempting to make sense of a world that seems to be disintegrating around him, told from Frank's perspective forty years after that tragic summer. Centered within multiple mysteries and deaths this book explores the cost of wisdom and the role of God's unfailing grace.
2 comments:
Hi James, Thank you for this very fine review and William Kent Krueger is a writer new to me but he sounds well worth reading. Ordinary Grace puts me in mind of Minnesota writers like Sinclair Lewis, Booth Tarkington, Jon Hassler's Staggerford series. And what books like Ordinary Grace show us is that regardless of where you live and what era you lived in, on the big issues of life: family, illness, joys, tragedies we all experience the same whether we grew up in a city or a smaller town. Life is difficult for all of us and the trick is to try to make your way through.
Hi Kathy,
This was the first I've read of Krueger as well. While his prose is not quite at the same level as Lewis or Tarkington, his narrative, as told by the thirteen year old Frank Drum, was compelling and I found myself drawn forward by the dark aspects contrasted with the small town atmosphere. I only faintly remember Hassler, as I read Staggerford many decades ago Another writer in a similar vein I would recommend is Kent Haruf whose novel Plainsong is the first of a trilogy of quiet masterpieces set in the Midwest.
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