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ORDINARY GRACE

by William Kent Krueger ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 2013

A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.

A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God.

An award-winning author for his long-running Cork O’ Connor series (Trickster’s Point , 2012, etc.), Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work. The setting is still his native Minnesota, the tension with the region’s Indian population remains palpable and the novel begins with the discovery of a corpse, that of a young boy who was considered a little slow and whose body was found near the train trestle in the woods on the outskirts of town. Was it an accident or something even more sinister? Yet, that opening fatality is something of a red herring (and that initial mystery is never really resolved), as it serves as a prelude to a series of other deaths that shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator (occasionally from the perspective of his memory of these events, four decades later), his stuttering younger brother and his parents, whose marriage may well not survive these tragedies. One of the novel’s pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows. “In a small town, nothing is private,” he realizes. “Word spreads with the incomprehensibility of magic and the speed of plague.” Frank’s father, Nathan, is the town’s pastor, an aspiring lawyer until his military experience in World War II left him shaken and led him to his vocation. His spouse chafes at the role of minister’s wife and doesn’t share his faith, though “the awful grace of God,” as it manifests itself within the novel, would try the faith of the most devout believer. Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy.

Pub Date: March 26, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4516-4582-8

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | HISTORICAL MYSTERY | GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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BOOK REVIEW

by William Kent Krueger

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

More by Kathy Reichs

by Kathy Reichs

by David Baldacci ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 1997

Irritatingly trite woman-in-periler from lawyer-turned-novelist Baldacci. Moving away from the White House and the white-shoe Washington law firms of his previous bestsellers (Absolute Power, 1996; Total Control, 1997), Baldacci comes up with LuAnn Tyler, a spunky, impossibly beautiful, white-trash truck stop waitress with a no-good husband and a terminally cute infant daughter in tow. Some months after the birth of Lisa, LuAnn gets a phone call summoning her to a make-shift office in an unrented storefront of the local shopping mall. There, she gets a Faustian offer from a Mr. Jackson, a monomaniacal, cross-dressing manipulator who apparently knows the winning numbers in the national lottery before the numbers are drawn. It seems that LuAnn fits the media profile of what a lottery winner should be—poor, undereducated but proud—and if she's willing to buy the right ticket at the right time and transfer most of her winnings to Jackson, she'll be able to retire in luxury. Jackson fails to inform her, however, that if she refuses his offer, he'll have her killed. Before that can happen, as luck would have it, LuAnn barely escapes death when one of husband Duane's drug deals goes bad. She hops on a first-class Amtrak sleeper to Manhattan with a hired executioner in pursuit. But executioner Charlie, one of Jackson's paid handlers, can't help but hear wedding bells when he sees LuAnn cooing with her daughter. Alas, a winning $100- million lottery drawing complicates things. Jackson spirits LuAnn and Lisa away to Sweden, with Charlie in pursuit. Never fear. Not only will LuAnn escape a series of increasingly violent predicaments, but she'll also outwit Jackson, pay an enormous tax bill to the IRS, and have enough left over to honeymoon in Switzerland. Too preposterous to work as feminine wish-fulfillment, too formulaic to be suspenseful. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)

Pub Date: Dec. 2, 1997

ISBN: 0-446-52259-7

Page Count: 528

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

More by David Baldacci

by David Baldacci

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Reading Ladies

Ordinary grace [book review].

August 28, 2020

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Genre/Categories/Setting: Adult Literary Fiction, Coming of Age, Faith, Minnesota

*This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

The summer of 1961 should have been another ordinary summer for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, but it was a summer of hardships, tragedy, grief, adult problems, and questions of faith. Told from Frank’s perspective forty years later, Ordinary Grace is a poignant coming-of-age story with elements of mystery and suspense.

My Thoughts:

Writing: William Kent Krueger is a masterful storyteller and an exquisite writer! It seems to me that the award-winning Ordinary Grace is an excellent example of Literary Fiction (a mostly character-driven novel where the primary focus is on understanding the world, your place in it, and the meaning of life). In Ordinary Grace , the story is straightforward and easy to follow. Krueger’s effortless storytelling ability is impressive (which, in actuality, means it took a lot of hard work!). Mystery, suspense, relationships, and ethical dilemmas drive the action.

Characters: Told from one point of view, the story includes a cast of interesting characters. Frank’s immediate family consists of a father who is a Methodist minister, an artistic mother, an older musical sister who is known for her piano skills and a beautiful voice, and a younger, socially awkward brother. Frank is the wild and independent one! In spite of this, he shows his father respect. I loved the loyalty the two brothers shared and one touching scene occurs when Frank enters his brother’s bedroom and assures him he will always be his friend. Both boys are kept in check somewhat by the expectations of being the minister’s sons….a situation I can relate to being a PK (preacher’s kid) myself! I appreciate the unwavering faith of the father and the example he sets as a spiritual man. In fact, once he is described in the book as having an “embracing heart.” I love that!

Strong Sense of Place: Krueger writes Ordinary Grace in a way that I can picture myself living in this small Minnesota town in 1961. It’s a simpler (but not safer) time when kids played outside until the street lights came on and were given quite a bit of freedom. If you enjoy a strong sense of place, you will enjoy the vivid world that Krueger creates!

Themes: Thoughtful themes are the driving force in Ordinary Grace as Frank comes to terms with the world around him. Themes include grief, sibling relationships, faith, loyalty, trust, respect, mystery, bullying, mental health, friendship, community, loss of innocence, forgiveness, prejudice, and the Grace of God.

“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.”

Recommended: I’m highly recommending Ordinary Grace for fans of literary fiction, for readers who love stories of complicated families, and for book clubs. One member of my online book club said that some parts remind her of Dearly Beloved . I can see that connection, especially in the relationship between the strong faith and resolve of the minister and his reluctant wife.

Favorite Quote: In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise it will light your way.” ~William Kent Krueger

***May contain spoilers*** Trigger Warning/Content Consideration: death of a YA child

Related: This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

My Rating: 5 Stars

Ordinary Grace Information

Meet the Author, William Kent Krueger

Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves. Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers. “Ordinary Grace,” his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. “Manitou Canyon,” number fifteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in September 2016. Visit his website at http://www.williamkentkrueger.com .

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27 comments.

I SO agree with you that Krueger is a “master storyteller and exquisite writer.” I’m up to date in his series, one of my top favorites, and am trying to somehow squeeze this one in. Excellent review, Carol💜

Thanks Jonetta! I haven’t tried his series but I’m tempted!

The series is fantastic on audio.

I’m so glad you liked this one, Carol. It’s on my list of Top 10 favorite books ever. Just beautiful! I have This Tender Land on my bookshelf, and need to get to it soon.

He’s such a great story teller! I think I might like this just a bit more than Tender Land.

I also loved it & rated it high. Just wondering what other books are on your Top 10?

I read this title several years ago Carol and remember that I truly loved it.

I’m happy to have finally read it!

I have This Tender Land on my shelf, and planned on reading it last year, but I still haven’t read it yet. I hope I’ll get to it soon.

~ Corina | The Brown Eyed Bookworm

It’s memorable! Enjoy!

I’ve heard such good things about this book! Lovely review.

Thanks! It’s memorable!

[…] 5 Stars. Compelling, engaging, and thought-provoking literary fiction. (You may have read Krueger’s This Tender Land this year.) My review of Ordinary Grace here. […]

[…] Reading Ladies […]

Thanks so much for the tag! I’m horrible at following through but I’ll save it under good intentions! Btw…I couldn’t find a comment section on your blog post. Maybe just me!

Thanks very much for the tag! I don’t have a very good track record of following through, but I’m saving your post in my good intentions file! Btw… I couldn’t find a place to comment on your post. I might have been looking too fast!

[…] Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger […]

[…] 2020 I read This Tender Land. After I read it, many readers commented and asked whether I had read Ordinary Grace. I had not, so I read that, too. I think I liked it even more than This Tender Land. Have you read […]

[…] Ordinary Grace, William Kent […]

I read this in 2021. I was truck with the excellent writing. You are correct, this book took a tremendous amount of hard work to achieve a mix of words that grab you and don’t let you go until the very end…and what a truly lovely end it was. As I write this, I feel such sadness with all the news (Ukraine). Revisiting “Ordinary Grace” gave me hope for the softer, often simpler side of life.

Thanks for adding your thoughts! I’m ready for a reread of this memorable story!

[…] Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger#throwbackthursday […]

Brilliant review! Sounds well worth taking a look.

Thanks! It’s my fav of his!

[…] October 19th at 7:00 p.m. or 21st at 6:30 p.m. We will discuss Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. The summer of 1961 should have been another ordinary summer for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, but it was a summer of hardships, tragedy, grief, adult problems, and questions of faith. Told from Frank’s perspective forty years later, Ordinary Grace is a poignant coming-of-age story with elements of mystery and suspense.Read more here. […]

Thanks for linking to my review! 🙌

Book Review: ORDINARY GRACE by William Kent Krueger

Many authors follow the dedication page with a quote (or quotes) from famous writers or thinkers.

William Kent Krueger, author of ORDINARY GRACE, gives us a line by Blaise Pascal,* then takes literary reference a step further, launching the novel with a Prologue written in the voice of the story’s narrator—a grown man recalling events from the summer he was thirteen. The narrator, Frank Drum, tells us that his father (who we soon learn was a Methodist minister) often quoted 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.

I read the second sentence several times, thinking there had to be a comma missing between the words, “sleep” and “pain,” wondered what “sleep pain” could be, but didn’t google Aeschylus (whom I know practically nothing about) until later, when the quote, punctuated the same way, came up again toward the end of the novel. According to Goodreads, Aeschylus wrote:

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.**

What I liked about ORDINARY GRACE was the way Frank and his younger brother Jake constantly eavesdropped on the adult conversations in their world—a Minnesota small town in 1961. The summer remembered in the story is one of death and mystery, and the motivation of the boys to find out what is going on is plausibly and cleverly crafted. I also admired Krueger’s capture of the time period. I was twelve in 1961, and the details and settings rang true. (Except on p. 236, when “Jake flopped on the sofa and turned on the TV.” Unless he could reach the TV from the sofa, Jake would have had to turn it on before flopping, as remotes weren’t around until the 1970s.)

Krueger’s prose felt clumsy to me at times, but that may not be fair criticism. The adult Frank Drum telling the story never purports to be a writer. From the Epilogue, we learn he is a high school history teacher, a philosophical one who believes there is no such thing as a true event. “We know dates and times and locations and participants but accounts of what happened depend upon the perspective from which the event is viewed.”

I wish both Krueger and his protagonist (and Aeschylus) had been a little more generous with their commas, and I wish I had liked ORDINARY GRACE better. That said, I couldn’t agree more with Drum’s (presumably Krueger’s) stance on reality versus perception.

I have another Krueger title—THIS TENDER LAND—in my to-read stack, so in the future I’ll have another opportunity to decide what I think about this very popular, much published author.

* The heart has reasons that reason does not understand —Blaise Pascal

**I am still confused by the Aeschylus quote, and don’t understand the one from Pascal, either. If I am ever fortunate enough to have a novel published, the page following the dedication is going to be blank.

5 Responses

Funny, I also peruse the same things before I read a book. Just finished “The Paris Library” by Janet Skeslien Charles, a novel based on true happenings during WWII. I enjoyed reading this one.

Just started “How Crafting Saved My Life” by Sutton Foster.

I enjoy your blog. Some things really resonate with me too. And I am a bookie. But I have to disagree about the remote control. My grandma had a remote control for her tv when I was about 8 or 9, which would be 60 or 61. It was very simple, turn on/off, change channels, push for each move up or down and the same for the volume. It was a marvel. Grandma loved it and so did I. We could sit and embroider and just use the remote to change the channel.

Marianne Fons

Dee, thank you for a great description of an early remote control and embroidering with your grandma. I stand corrected. That said, I’m pretty sure the Drum family in ORDINARY GRACE would not have had one.

elizabeth a hinze

Loved both books. I listened to both of them. I really enjoy being read to. I think of his books as stories, not real life. I like a good story 🙂

I bought this book a couple weeks ago and it’s sitting on top of my desk. Time to start reading. Thank you for sharing.

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BookBrowse Reviews Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Ordinary Grace

by William Kent Krueger

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

Literary Fiction
Midwest, USA
Minn. Wis. Iowa
1960s & '70s
Coming of Age
Dealing with Loss
Religious or Spiritual Themes

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Reader Reviews

An irresistible narrator and a strong sense of time and place distinguish this murder mystery set in the Midwest of the 1960s

William Kent Krueger's latest novel is an atmospheric murder mystery set in a fictional small town in Minnesota. The tragedies that unfold during the summer of 1961 are described forty years after by the now 53-year-old Frank Drum. The eldest son of the town's Methodist minister, Frank was 13 at the time five people who lived in the area died under suspicious circumstances. Along with reporting on the fatalities and the investigations that surround them, Frank vividly describes what it was like to be a kid in middle America during that era, the colorful characters that populated the small town, and the lasting impact the deaths had on his family and others. I tend to avoid novels where children are the main characters, as I seldom find their thoughts, conversations or actions credible over the length of the book; in my view, they generally come across as too worldly or precocious. Krueger's choice of protagonist, though, is perfect. By having the older Frank tell the story of his younger self, he allows for the immature decisions of his character while keeping the maturity embedded in the narrative from seeming dubious or out of place. Truly Frank is one of the more irresistible narrators I've come across in a long time, and the author skillfully conveys a young boy's confusion and angst from the perspective of adulthood; this character sucked me into the story and didn't let go until the end. The highlight for me, though, was the marvelous sense of time and place Krueger created throughout the novel. As a child of the 60s and a Midwesterner, I could absolutely picture the summertime scenes the author painted. The entire novel is a perfect snapshot of an idyllic time in a prosperous and peaceful United States.

There was a parade that afternoon as there was every Fourth of July. The high school band marched in their braided uniforms and so did members of the VFW, many of them dressed in the military finery in which they'd served. The firemen drove their trucks, and the mayor and other city politicians rode in cars and waved, and there were flatbeds made into floats and hauled behind pickups cleaned and waxed for the day… and even kids joined in the parade, pulling their pets or small siblings behind them in Radio Flyer wagons decked out in crepe of red, white, and blue… [The park] was full of vendors selling cotton candy and hot dogs and bratwurst and mini-donuts and helium-filled balloons…There were games with prizes and there were polka bands and a temporary dance floor that had been laid out in the grass.

The author takes his time setting the scene and establishing his characters, and consequently the murder at the heart of the novel, which occurs halfway through the narrative, takes some patience to reach. Although red herrings abound, it is relatively easy to figure out "whodunit" long before the plot's denouement; the mystery is, however, satisfying enough to hold most readers' attention throughout. A strong religious thread runs through the novel, and one of the major themes of the book is the role faith can play when unthinkable tragedy occurs. Although the narrator's family is Protestant, the spiritual message is more inclusive than a Christian-themed book might be, leaning more toward belief in God as a provider of comfort than in Jesus Christ. The end result is that the ideas at the book's core will appeal to Christians and non-Christians alike. And, while the faith-based portions are central to the novel, they're not presented in a heavy-handed, "preachy" manner. As someone who doesn't consider herself a person of faith, I found these sections of the book to be touching rather than overbearing or lecturing. The author goes out of his way to portray New Bremen's characters as covering a broad spectrum of society. His milieu comprises the man of God, the local alcoholic, the emotionally wounded war vet, the angry Native American, the itinerate, the town bully, the cold rich person, the talented loner, persons with disabilities – and on and on, including just about every type of individual one can think of. Unfortunately, the end result of trying to be so comprehensive is that many of these characters are stereotypical and clichéd. It's not that they're poorly described or one-dimensional really; it's more that they're formulaic, with predictable actions that detract from the otherwise fine writing. The narrator is the exception to this, and the skill with which his character and a few others are drawn makes up for the unexceptional nature of the minor players in the drama. Overall Ordinary Grace is an entertaining mystery with some rather emotional content at its heart. In addition to an engaging plot, the book is thought-provoking and, at times, quite poignant. Those looking for a character-driven mystery with content that goes beyond the standard police procedural will find this one worth perusing, and book clubs in particular will find it provides many topics for discussion.

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, ordinary grace.

One cannot read ORDINARY GRACE without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. My initial reaction was a question: How do you write something this good? I suppose that the simple answer, though true nonetheless, is: one word at a time. Yet that is not the whole truth. I suspect that, considering its subject matter, a great deal of the book was painful in the telling for author William Kent Krueger, though hopefully relief was obtained in the release. And indeed, this is at once a beautiful and painful story that digs down into those corners and crannies of that box we call truth, the one to which we give homage but cringe a bit when we open it up, look inside, and reveal its elements, one by one.

ORDINARY GRACE has been referred to elsewhere as a “literary mystery,” and that would not be wrong. But you wouldn’t want to consign this novel to any particular genre when to do so might limit its readership. Each and all of Krueger’s Cork O’Connor books arguably could be classified as literary mysteries. ORDINARY GRACE is a bit different, and not merely due to Cork’s absence. It is a stand-alone work, a coming-of-age story that I sense is at least partially biographical, by turns heartwarming and heart-rending, a very spiritual book shot through with metaphors and turns of phrase that demand to be noted, marked and re-read long after the last page is turned.

"ORDINARY GRACE is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece."

Frank Drum is the first-person narrator, a 13-year-old p.k. (preacher’s kid) on the cusp of innocence and knowledge in the summer of 1961. It was a time not so far removed from the present, though for those of us fortunate enough to have lived then and can recall those days, it seems as if it’s an entirely different world. Frank is the middle child of three, wedged comfortably for the most part between Ariel, his older sister, who is mildly flawed physically yet possessed of an enormous talent for musical composition, and Jake, his younger brother, whose high intelligence is hampered by a stammer that manifests itself in public speaking. Jake is a bit of a wild child, gently chafed by his parents’ rules and thus given to acting out somewhat, though certainly he is no worse than many of the same of that particular era and positively angelic when compared to those who run rampant now. His father is a Methodist minister, charged with the spiritual needs of three small churches in and near New Bremen, Minnesota.

As we come to find out fairly early on, Jake’s mother is somewhat disappointed with her station in life at the beginning of the summer of 1961. Thinking she was marrying an attorney with a promising future, she instead finds herself to be the wife of a preacher who is uprooted every few years to play the role of the parson’s wife before a new audience. New Bremen is her hometown, and the tensions of the past that roil quietly beneath the surface are revealed through Jake’s eyes as only an unvarnished teenage boy of that era could see them. What is most significant, though, are four deaths that will affect each member of the family to varying degrees and threaten to tear it apart. They are four very different deaths --- the first an apparent accident, the second from natural causes, and the fourth by suicide.

It is the third death --- a murder --- that ultimately reveals a series of secrets that ripple through Jake’s family and the town of New Bremen. The Reverend Drum, who has a faith in God that runs wide and deep, finds his beliefs to be tested as never before, even as he relies on it to take him through the storm of his life. Trust is shattered, mysteries are solved, and a miracle occurs. By the end of ORDINARY GRACE (a title you will not forget by story’s end), not all can be put right, but things can go on, and go well, if not perfectly.

ORDINARY GRACE is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on March 29, 2013

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Publication Date: March 4, 2014
Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Historical Mystery , Mystery
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN-10: 1451645856
ISBN-13: 9781451645859

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“Ordinary grace” by William Kent Krueger – Book Review

With busy lives to lead most of us do not appreciate the ordinary. It is only when illness, death, or some other traumatic event interrupts our lives that we yearn for a simple, regular routine. Then ‘ordinary’ seems like bliss.

Set in 1961, this novel was written with equal parts nostalgia and wisdom. A mystery novel, but not… more a literary rendering of a bygone summer in the life of a son of of Methodist clergyman. How that summer shaped his entire life, and turned his world asunder.

Small town life on the Minnesota River. The mystery and confusion that is adolescence. And… a family tragedy. Frankie and Jake are brothers. Frankie, wise beyond his thirteen years, Jake, the socially inept younger sibling who has a debilitating stutter. They meander through a hot Minnesota summer with the freedom of youth kept in check by the obligations of being the sons of the local pastor. When their older sister is murdered, their innocence is lost forever and their world seen through more cynical eyes. Bereaved, the family copes as best they can, each in his or her own way. In their small town suspicion is rampant, as is guilt, confusion and grief.

Written with empathy and insight, this novel is more than a mystery novel, it is a literary work which causes the reader to question their own ethics and faith, while mourning the loss of innocence.

Highly recommended for those who like to read mysteries, it will also appeal greatly to those who appreciate Christian fiction and family dramas. It reminded me a little of the movie “Stand by me” in its setting and tone. I’ll admit I shed more than one tear…. Thanks Mr. Krueger for a job well done.

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4 responses to “ordinary grace” by william kent krueger – book review.

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I found this to be an excellent story. The uncommon story kept me interested and I am looking forward to the next book from this author . Thank you !!! I also advise to read https://bit.ly/2Mi9dRF Melissa Bellis . PS: I appreciate this site. Thank you so much

Wonderful review! Just about to start this one…:)

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Review: 'ordinary grace,' by william kent krueger.

Somewhere in the "broad valley of the Minnesota River" nestles the fictional town of New Bremen, home to the Drums and the Brandts, two families separated by class, whose lives collide in tragedy in William Kent Krueger's "Ordinary Grace." Set during the summer of 1961 (the year the Twins first play in Minnesota), this is a touching coming-of-age novel about family, faith and the empathy that can come from a violent loss.

That Krueger, an acclaimed mystery writer and Twin Cities native, chose to explore this new territory (geography and genre) isn't a surprise to me. I've always thought his mysteries featuring Cork O'Connor were evidence of Krueger's distinctive moral imagination (the series is steeped in compassion for those caught in the clash of cultures and traditions). The best coming-of-age novels share this moral sensibility, exploring events and their epiphanies that propel characters from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to awareness.

In "Ordinary Grace," the novel's middle-aged narrator, Frank Drum, tells of the summer when, at 13, a child being killed by a train was the catalyst for a series of tragic events that brought his family and the Brandts to their knees, baptizing them in the "awful grace of God."

"When you look back at a life," explains Frank, "what you see is a path that weaves in and out of deep shadow." And to construct a narrative from that past, you must build from what "stands in the light" as well as what you "imagine in the dark." The result is a story told in sepia tones. Like looking at old photographs in a family album, Krueger's descriptions and details evoke a past tinged with sadness but colored with hope.

"Loss," says Frank toward the novel's end, "once it's become a certainty, is like a rock you hold in your hand … you can use it to beat yourself or you can throw it away."

Although Krueger's plot rises to a predictable conclusion, there's such a quiet beauty in his prose and such depth to his characters that I was completely captivated by this book's ordinary grace.

Carole E. Barrowman teaches at Alverno College in Milwaukee and is the co-author of "Hollow Earth."

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Ordinary Grace

67 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapters 9-14

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Summary and Study Guide

The novel Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger, is set in the fictional Minnesota town of New Bremen, in the summer of 1961. The plotcenters on a quartet of deaths that take place in and around the town over the course of that summer. The book is narrated by middle child Frank Drum; its narrative present is 2001, when Frank is fifty-three years old and living in St. Paul, Minnesota, though the vast majority of the text treats the 1961 New Bremen summer as its narrative present; barring the book’s prologue and epilogue, it’s uncommon for Frank to return to or acknowledge the novel’s narrative present while recounting this moment in his past.

Frank’s father, Nathan, is a Methodist minister for three area churches in and around New Bremen. Frank’s mother, Ruth, leads choir for church services. After college, Nathan had planned to be a lawyer, but served in World War II and came back a changed and devout man. Ruth, despite her presence in the church, is not a true believer; she drinks, smokes, and questions God’s existence over the course of the book.

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Frank has an older sister, Ariel, and a younger brother, Jake. Ariel, a talented singer and pianist, is eighteen years old and has been accepted to Juilliard for the following fall semester. Her boyfriend, Karl Brandt , is the son of wealthy local beer magnates, and lives in the Heights, New Bremen’s wealthier area, while the Drums live in the Flats, which is middle- and working-class. Ariel also helps Emil Brandt , Karl’s uncle, with transcribing his memoir . Emil has returned to New Bremen blind and disfigured from a war injury; prior to serving, he was a successful music composer in Hollywood, “finding easy work in the music side of the film business…and [falling] in with a good-time Hollywood crowd” (63). Emil was also engaged to Frank’s mother, Ruth, before running out on her to seek fame in New York City, prior to his move to Hollywood. The tension between Nathan, Frank’s father, and Emil is palpable in multiple moments over the course of the book.

Jake Drum , Frank’s younger brother, has a stutter and is more devout than his cynical older brother. He is consistently the voice of conscience over the course of the book, often serving as the proverbial angel on Frank’s shoulder. Due to Jake’s speech disorder, he has a special relationship with Lise Brandt , Emil Brandt’s sister. Lise is deaf and lives with Emil in a converted farmhouse on the edge of town, where she spends the majority of her time gardening. Lise gets along well with Jake and is devoted to her brother, Emil, but largely untrusting of everyone else in New Bremen. Lise loathes to be touched, so much so that when she is, she flies into uncontrollable panic and rage.

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The first death of the summer is Bobby Cole , a developmentally-disabled, adolescent boy who is hit by a train and killed while sitting on a railroad trestle that spans a stretch of the Minnesota River. Some in New Bremen suspect foul play. After hearing a group of adults discuss Cole’s death, Frank and Jake head to the railroad tracks and trestle, where they come upon a Native American male, Warren Redstone , standing over the corpse of an adult male at the river’s edge. Redstone identifies the dead man as “The Skipper,” an itinerant who may have served in WWII. Frank and Jake eventually reveal this information to Gus , a war buddy of Frank’s father who lives in the basement of the Methodist church across the street from the Drum family home. Over the course of the novel, Gus often serves as a surrogate uncle for Frank and Jake, and is the adult the boys turn to in moments of uncertainty about how to handle moral and ethical quandaries.

On the Fourth of July, following an Independence Day parade and recital, Ariel, Frank’s older sister, goes missing. Her body is found by Frank, floating in the Minnesota River. An autopsy is performed, and it’s learned that Ariel was hit in the head with a blunt instrument then dumped in the river, to drown.A number of characters in the novel are identified as possible suspects. Leading the way are Ariel’s wealthy boyfriend, Karl Brandt, town tough Morris Engdahl , and non-Anglo semi-drifter Warren Redstone. After Engdahl’s alibi checks out, suspicion next falls on Redstone, who Frank and Jake encounter at the edge of the river, where Redstone keeps a lean-to, for fishing. The sadistic Officer Doyle arrives with other adults, and Redstone runs away; later, Frank finds the man hiding on the tracks of the same trestle where Bobby Cole was killed, and ultimately allows Redstone to flee, without informing the adults tracking him.

With Redstone out of the picture, suspicion next falls on Karl Brandt, Ariel’s boyfriend. The medical examiner’s other discovery, in regard to Ariel’s death, is that Ariel was five to six weeks pregnant; it’s assumed that the child is Karl’s, and that Karl has killed her so as not to impede his future collegiate career and be forced to marry someone from a lower social standing. Karl subsequently reveals to Frank’s father, Nathan, that he is gay, and shortly after dies after driving his red roadster into a cottonwood tree. Whether or not Karl does this on purpose is left ambiguous.

For Frank, attention again centers on Warren Redstone as Ariel’s killer, until a trip to Emil and Lise Brandt’s converted farmhouse, where Frank has an epiphany and realizes it would be easy for the sightless Emil to have snuck down to the river and bludgeoned Ariel. Upon questioning by Nathan Drum , Emil admits to fathering Ariel’s child but says he is not the killer. Frank cuts his hand while helping Lise Brandt in the garden and discovers items that belonged to his sister, Ariel, in Lise’s medicine cabinet, identifying Lise as the killer. Shortly after, Frank and his family leave New Bremen to move to St. Paul, Minnesota. The book concludes with an epilogue set in 2001, where Frank tells of the of the fates of the numerous, surviving characters that populated his New Bremen past.

Ordinary Grace functions as both a mystery and a coming-of-age story. In regard to the latter, the book is a bildungsroman for both Frank and the Midwestern postwar small town. With its religious overtones, it also seeks to illustrate both the power and limits of faith. The novel won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2014 andalso won the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award in 2013. William Kent Krueger is a crime and mystery writer; many of his works are set in Minnesota, including the Cork O’Connor series and the Iron Lake Series.

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Review: Ordinary Grace

Ordinary Grace , William Kent Krueger. New York: Atria Books, 2013.

Summary: Two boys in a rural Minnesota town encounter a series of deaths, including one within their family, and discover something of the “awful grace of God.”

The writing of William Kent Krueger has been my discovery of this summer. How grateful I am for the person who recommended his work to me! Ordinary Grace is a standalone novel set in a rural Minnesota town in 1961. The story centers around Frank Drum, the narrator, and his younger brother, Jake. Jake stutters, and is often silent, but also always seeing and often insightful. Their father is a pastor, responsible for a three church charge. Their mother is a musician, once in love with the town’s music professor, Emil Brandt, who had returned from war blinded, physically and emotionally damaged, who lives with his sister Lise, a deaf spinster attached to Emil and to her garden. Instead, Ruth Drum ended up marrying Nathan Drum when he was ambitious to become a lawyer. War changed all that, a survivor of too many battles, having lost too many men, hearing a call from God amid the loss. Ruth tried to make the best of what she had not expected, living the life of a pastor’s life instead of being the spouse of an up and coming lawyer. Nathan came back with one of those he did not lose, Gus, who loves drink too much, gets into fights, lives in the church basement, getting by on odd jobs about the town. Surprisingly, Gus is a confidant of Nathan who he calls “Captain” and often advisor to the boys.

The other person in this circle is Ariel, the Drum’s daughter, just graduated from high school, a gifted singer and composer, headed to Juilliard, representing the unfulfilled dreams of her mother. She is dating Karl Brandt, nephew to Emil and son of the wealthy brewing family who live in a mansion at the top of the hill and drives a sporty convertible. At one point, Frank spots her slipping out in the middle of the night, returning before morning. Shortly after, she begins to reconsider her Juilliard plans.

The story spans a single summer, filled with a mixture of normal adventures, a scrap with Morris Engdahl, the town bully, at the quarry, where they get the best of him, and encounters with a mysterious Native American living in a shanty down by the river, Warren Redstone. It is also a story that progresses by a series of deaths to which Frank is a party–the first is Bobby Cole, a mentally challenged boy, struck by a train passing over a tressle near the town where Bobby was sitting. Then Frank spots the body of a mysterious stranger, an itinerant who had died. Redstone is nearby, but had nothing to do with the death.

The next death is the hardest. Ariel doesn’t come home after partying with friends following an event where a musical piece she wrote was performed. A desperate search follows but it is Frank who finds her spotting her body in the river. Engdahl, Redstone, and Emil all are suspects. For some mysterious reason Frank can’t explain, he lets Redstone escape when the authorities are in pursuit, probably saving his life.

The tragedy hits them all hard. Jake gives up on God. Ruth separates from Nathan, who represents the God with whom she is angry. The tragedy deepens with the results of the autopsy and the events that follow. The words of Aeschylus are used at one point, “the awful grace of God” and it is this Nathan wrestles with as he tries to grapple with this death and guide his broken family and flock. He says,

“‘I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’…’When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken?

‘I will tell you what is left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even to the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them. “

We see people wrestling with the hardest of tragedies and struggling to hold onto the ordinary graces of God as they face this “awful” grace–these seemingly inexplicable ways of God. People practice ordinary grace in all their brokenness–Gus and officer Doyle fighting and then forgiving, an outing on horses at Gus’s girlfriend Ginger’s farm, congregation members providing food, music, prayers. A moment when Ruth and Frank sit together on the tressle where he’d spotted Ariel’s body, and grieve and extend comfort to each other.

The phrase “ordinary grace” is actually used only once in the book. At a reception after the funeral services, Nathan is unable to offer a grace before the dinner, wordless in his own grief. People look at one another wondering who will pray. Jake, who has turned away from God, says he will. And he prays without stuttering. Frank recalls:

“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.”

Jake never stuttered again, finding the miracle he needed to believe again.

Krueger plumbs the depths of the darkness of inexplicable tragedy, those places we are inclined to wonder where God is and to rail against God. In one sense, there are no answers to dispel the darkness. Yet Krueger leads us to believe that for those who hold on, there is the ordinary grace to go on, holding to faith, hope, and love. There is no grace to make life go smoothly and tragedy-free. Life is not like that. But Krueger, in these ordinary, broken people in a small town, reveals the unconditional love of God in the love they give each other, and the faith that turns to God in anger, grief, hope, and a prayer before a meal, in which a quiet miracle takes place.

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About the Book

In 1961 New Bremen, Minnesota, all is quiet and serene. The Minnesota River flows through the countryside, the town barber knows everyone’s name, and folks dutifully attend church every Sunday. But that serenity is thrown into turmoil as a series of tragic deaths lead 13-year-old Frank Drum and his family on a hunt for terrible truths. But at what cost comes wisdom? In this powerful novel from the author of the Cork O’Connor mysteries, a boy must leave his childhood behind and confront the dark nature of the adult world and its myriad moral questions: What secrets will destroy us? How do we deal with grief? And what solace is there in the ordinary grace of the world?

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Publication Date: March 4, 2014
Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction , Historical Mystery , Mystery
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN-10: 1451645856
ISBN-13: 9781451645859

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Ordinary Grace (Krueger)

Ordinary Grace William Kent Krueger, 2013 Atria Books 336 pp. ISBN-13: 9781451645859 Summary 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. New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years. Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God. ( From the publisher .)

Author Bio • Birth—November 16, 1950 • Where—Torrington, Wyoming, USA • Education—Stanford University (no degree) • Awards—Anthony Award's Best Novel (twice); Anthony Award's Best First Novel; Loft-McKnight Award • Currently—lives in St. Paul, Minnesota William Kent Krueger is an American author and crime writer, best known for the 13 novels of his Cork O'Connor series of books, ending with Tamarack County in 2013. The series is set mainly in Minnesota, USA. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. Only one other author has done this since the award's inception in 1986. Krueger has said that he wanted to be a writer from the third grade, when his story "The Walking Dictionary" was praised by his teacher and parents. He attended Stanford University but his academic path was cut short when he came into conflict with the university's administration during student protests of spring 1970. Throughout his early life, he supported himself by logging timber, digging ditches, working in construction, and being published as a freelance journalist. He never stopped writing. He wrote short stories and sketches for many years, but it was not until the age of 40 that he finished the manuscript of his first novel, Iron Lake . It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best First Novel, the Minnesota Book Award, and the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award. In 2013 he published his first stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace , referred to by Publishers Weekly as "elegiac, evocative....a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption." He lives with family in St. Paul, Minnesota. Writing influences Krueger has said his favorite book is To Kill A Mockingbird . He grew up reading Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James T. Farrell. Most influential among these was Hemingway. In an interview for Shots magazine, Krueger described his admiration for Hemingway's prose:

His prose is clean, his word choice perfect, his cadence precise and powerful. He wastes nothing. In Hemingway, what’s not said is often the whole point of a story. I like that idea, leaving the heart off the page so that the words, the prose itself, is the first thing to pierce you. Then the meaning comes .

As a mystery genre writer, Krueger credits Tony Hillerman and James Lee Burke as his strongest influences. Writing process Krueger prefers to write early in the morning. Rising at 5.30 am, he goes to the nearby St Clair Broiler, where he drinks coffee and writes long-hand in wirebound notebooks. He began going to the diner in his 30s when he had to make time for writing early in the morning before going to work at the University of Minnesota. He continues the habit, and today has his "own" booth there. In return for his loyalty, the restaurant has hosted book launches for Krueger. At one, the staff wore T-shirts emblazoned with "A nice place to visit. A great place to die." Cork O'Connor series When Krueger decided to set the series in northern Minnesota, he realized that a large percentage of the population was of mixed ancestry. In college, Krueger had wanted to be a cultural anthropologist; he became intrigued by researching the Ojibwe culture and weaving the information into his books. Krueger's books are set in and around Native American reservations. The main character, Cork O'Connor is part Ojibwe, part Irish.

History was a study in futility. Because people never learned. Century after century, they committed the same atrocities against one another or against the earth, and the only thing that changed was the magnitude of the slaughter... Conscience was a devil that plagued the individual. Collectively, a people squashed it as easily as stepping on a daisy .

Krueger has read the first Ojibwe historian, William Whipple Warren, as well as Francis Densmore, Gerald Vizenor and Basil Johnston. He has also read novels by Louise Erdrich and Jim Northrup. Krueger began to meet and get to know the Ojibwe people and remains fascinated by their culture. His descriptions are meant to express his characters' feelings about the settings. Krueger believes that the sense of place is made resonant by the actions and emotions of the characters within it. He describes it as "a dynamic bond that has the potential to heighten the drama of every scene." ( From Wikipedia .)

Book Reviews Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace …This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile. Huffington Post [E]legiac, evocative.... The summer of 1961 finds thirteen-year-old Frank Drum living in small-town New Bremen, Minn. He and his younger brother, Jake, idolize their older sister, Ariel.... The Drums’ peaceful existence is shattered, however, when Ariel fails to return from a late-night party. In the aftermath of her disappearance...dark secrets about New Bremen come to light....for what becomes a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption. Publishers Weekly For fans of Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home or Krueger’s other works, this is a touching read, with just enough intrigue to keep the story moving along. — Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Library Journal A thoughtful literary mystery that is wholly compelling and will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin.... Don’t take the title too literally, for Krueger has produced something that is anything but ordinary. BookPage One cannot read Ordinary Grace without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. Ordinary Grace is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece. Bookreporter.com ( Starred review .) A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God.... Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work.... [A] series of...deaths shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator.... One of the novel's pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows.... Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike. Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book: • How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips) • Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction • Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart) SPOILER ALERT 1. Talk about the characters, starting with Ruth and Nathan Drum, the narrator's mother and father. How would you describe them and, especially, their marriage? 2. What do you think of Emil Brandt and his sister? 3. How would you describe Gus? What is the bond between Gus and Nathan based on? What do you think was the event during the war that the two refer to obliquely as they sit together in the darkened church. 4. Discuss, in particular, Nathan's sermon after Ariel's death? What are its theological implications? Does Nathan answer the question of theodicy: if God is loving and all powerful, why do bad things to happen to good people? 5. What prompts Frank, after his father's sermon, to go to Jake and tell him, "You're my best friend in the whole world. You always have been and you always will be"? 6. Why is Ruth so angry with Nathan after Ariel disappears? How would you respond to such a horrific loss: would you respond as Ruth does, in anger? Or would you be more like Nathan? 7. How would you define grace? What, specifically, does "ordinary grace" refer to in the story, and what is the larger religious significance of the term "ordinary grace"? Why is the grace spoken by Jake so extraordinary...and how does it affect members of his family? 8. Whom did you first suspect...and when did you begin to suspect the real killer? What "red herrings" (false clues) does the author put in the way to lead readers down the wrong path? 9. Much of the book has to do with young Frank's attempt to separate what he thinks he knows from what might (or might not) be the ultimate truth. Have you even been in a position of "knowing" something with certainty...and then learning that your judgment was wrong? How can we guard ourselves against false accusations? 10. What does Warren Redstone mean when he says to Frank, "You've just killed me, white boy"? Why does Frank let Redstone escape? Even Jake tells us...

How could I possibly explain my silence, my complicity in his escape, things I didn't really understand myself? My heart had simply directed me in a way my head couldn't wrap its thinking around ....

Was Jake wrong to let Redstone get away? Should he have kept silent?

11. Talk about Karl Brandt and how he dies—an accident...or intentional? 12. What do you think happened to Bobby Cole? Why might the author have left that mystery unresolved?

( Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks .)

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Ordinary Grace

On Sale Now

New York Times bestseller
Winner, Edgar Award for Best Novel
Winner, Anthony Award for Best Novel
Winner, Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel
Winner, Barry Award for Best Novel
One of the 100 Best Mysteries and Thriller Books of All Time – Time Magazine
A School Library Journal Best Book of 2013

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Atria Books Hardcover 2013, ISBN 978-1451645828 Atria Books Trade Paperback 2014, ISBN 978-1451645859

About the Book

Description.

“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.”

New Bremen, Minnesota, 1961. The Twins were playing their debut season, ice-cold root beers were selling out at the soda counter of Halderson’s Drugstore, and Hot Stuff comic books were a mainstay on every barbershop magazine rack. It was a time of innocence and hope for a country with a new, young president. But for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum it was a grim summer in which death visited frequently and assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Frank begins the season preoccupied with the concerns of any teenage boy, but when tragedy unexpectedly strikes his family—which includes his Methodist minister father; his passionate, artistic mother; Juilliard-bound older sister; and wise-beyond-his-years kid brother—he finds himself thrust into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal, suddenly called upon to demonstrate a maturity and gumption beyond his years.

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.

One of the 100 Best Mysteries and Thriller Books of All Time – Time Magazine

Winner, Edgar Award for Best Novel (2014), Mystery Writers of America

Winner, Anthony Award for Best Novel (2014), Bouchercon World Mystery Convention

Winner, Barry Award for Best Novel (2014), Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine

Winner, Dilys Award (2014), Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

Winner, Squid Award for Best Mystery Set in the United States (2014), Left Coast Crime

Winner, Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel (2014), Mystery Readers International

Winner, Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for Adult Fiction (2013), Midwest Independent Booksellers Association

Winner, Silver Falchion Award for Best Novel: Literary Mystery/Suspense (2014), Killer Nashville Conference

Finalist, Maine Readers’ Choice Award (2014), Maine State Library and Maine Library Association

Nominee, Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery & Thriller (2013)

Selected, A School Library Journal Best Book of 2013

Selected, Summer 2013 Reading Group Indie Next List Pick

Selected, Women’s National Book Association Great Group Reads (2013)

“Besides being a terrific story that examines a powerful range of human experiences and emotions, it was the authentic voice of the teenage narrator, Frank Drum, that kept me reading late into the night. Though the tone is quiet, Krueger artfully layered the story with suspenseful examinations of family life, death, fury, spiritual fiber and redemption.” —Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“A pitch-perfect, wonderfully evocative examination of violent loss. In Frank Drum’s journey away from the shores of childhood—a journey from which he can never return—we recognize the heartbreaking price of adulthood and its ‘wisdoms.’ I loved this book.” —Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Live by Night and The Given Day

“A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“…elegiac, evocative…. a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.” — Publishers Weekly

“…an extraordinary coming-of-age novel set in a rural Minnesotan town in the summer of 1961…Krueger has written a moving story, replete with authentic characters who grow in wisdom and grace and learn to accept what they cannot change.” — Shelf Awareness

“A thoughtful literary mystery that is wholly compelling and will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin. . . Don’t take the title too literally, for Krueger has produced something that is anything but ordinary.” — BookPage

“One cannot read Ordinary Grace without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. Ordinary Grace is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece.” —Bookreporter.com

“Sometimes a work of fiction just comes to you, sits in your soul, touches your life experiences and then is hard to remember as fiction. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruger is such a novel.” — Capital Journal (Pierre, SD)

“Not often does a story feel at once fresh and familiar. But Ordinary Grace , a new novel from William Kent Krueger, is both, and it is affecting.” — The Denver Post

“…the tone is much like To Kill a Mockingbird , with its combination of dread and nostalgia.” — Detroit News

“Everything about this book, from language to ideas to Aeschylus’s epigram is beautiful and you’ll think about it long after you’re finished reading.” — The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“A perfect book club read, truly a book to love and read more than once. Absolutely recommended.” —Historical Novel Society

“Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace …This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile.” — Huffington Post

“There’s such a quiet beauty in his prose and such depth to his characters that I was completely captivated by this book’s ordinary grace.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“ Ordinary Grace is engaging from the first page, a quiet novel that unfurls its sad story slowly, but eloquently, leaving its mark on your heart.” — The Missourian (Columbia, MO)

“A superb literary novel.” — New York Journal of Books

“Krueger’s elegy for innocence is a deeply memorable tale.” — Washington Post

All the dying that summer began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses, killed on the railroad tracks outside New Bremen, Minnesota, sliced into pieces by a thousand tons of steel speeding across the prairie toward South Dakota. His name was Bobby Cole. He was a sweet-looking kid and by that I mean he had eyes that seemed full of dreaming and he wore a half smile as if he was just about to understand something you’d spent an hour trying to explain. I should have known him better, been a better friend. He lived not far from my house and we were the same age. But he was two years behind me in school and might have been held back even more except for the kindness of certain teachers. He was a small kid, a simple child, no match at all for the diesel-fed drive of a Union Pacific locomotive.

It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder. You might think I remember that summer as tragic and I do but not completely so. 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.

In the end maybe that’s what the summer was about. I was no older than Bobby and didn’t understand such things then. I’ve come four decades since but I’m not sure that even now I fully understand. I still spend a lot of time thinking about the events of that summer. About the terrible price of wisdom. The awful grace of God.

Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor. Outside the chirr of crickets and other night bugs gave life to the dark. It was not yet July but already hot as blazes. That may have been why I was awake. In 1961 no one but the rich in New Bremen had air conditioning. During the day most folks battled the heat by closing their curtains against the sun and at night fans drew in the promise of cooler air. In our house there were only two fans and neither was in the bedroom I shared with my brother.

As I tossed about on top of the sheet trying to get comfortable in the heat the telephone rang. My father often said that nothing good came of phone calls in the middle of the night. He answered them anyway. I figured it was simply another part of his job, another part of all the things my mother hated about what he did. The telephone sat on a small table in the hallway outside my room. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the brittle ring until the hall light came on.

Across the room Jake shifted in his bed and I heard the frame squeak.

My father said, “Any damage?” Then he said, tired and polite, “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Thank you, Cleve.”

I was out of bed and trotting into the hallway before he hung up. His hair was wild from sleep, his cheeks shadowed blue with stubble. His eyes were weary and sad. He wore a T-shirt and striped boxer shorts.

“Go back to sleep, Frank,” he told me.

“I can’t,” I said. “It’s too hot and I’m already awake. Who was it?”

“A police officer.”

“Is somebody hurt?”

“No.” He closed his eyes and put the tips of his fingers against his lids and rubbed. “It’s Gus.”

“He’s drunk?”

He nodded and yawned.

“Go back to bed.”

“Can I go with you?”

“I told you, go back to bed.”

“Please. I won’t be in the way. And I can’t sleep now anyway.”

“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake everybody.”

“Please, Dad.”

He had energy enough to rise and meet his duty but not the strength to blunt the assault of a thirteen-year-old looking for adventure in the middle of an oppressive summer night. He said, “Get dressed.”

Jake was sitting on the edge of his bed. He already had his shorts on and was pulling up his socks.

I said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“With you and Dad.” He knelt and in the dark under his bed dug for his sneakers.

“Like hell.”

“You said hell,” he said, still digging.

“You’re not going, Howdy Doody.”

He was younger than me by two years and two heads shorter. Because he had red hair and freckles and freakish ears that stood out like the handles on a sugar bowl people in New Bremen sometimes called him Howdy Doody. When I was pissed at him I called him Howdy Doody too.

“You’re not the b-b-b-boss of me,” he said.

Jake almost always stuttered in public but around me he only stuttered when he was mad or scared.

“No,” I replied, “but I can p-p-p-pound the crap out of you any time I want.”

He found his sneakers and began to put them on.

Night was the dark of the soul and being up in an hour when the rest of the world was dead with sleep gave me a sinful thrill. My father often ventured out like this on some lonely mission but I’d never been allowed to go. This was special and I didn’t want to share it with Jake. I’d already wasted precious time however so I left off arguing and got myself dressed.

My brother was waiting in the hall when I came out. I intended to argue with him some more but my father slipped from his bedroom and shut the door behind him. He looked at Jake as if about to say something unpleasant. Instead he sighed and signaled us both to go before him down the stairs.

Outside the crickets were kicking up a frenzy. Fireflies hung in the still black air flickering on and off like the slow blink of dreamy eyes. As we walked to the garage our shadows glided before us, black boats on a silver sea of moonlight.

“Shotgun,” Jake said.

“Ah, come on. You’re not even supposed to be here.”

“I called it.”

Which was the rule. In New Bremen, a town platted and populated by Germans, rules were abided by. Even so I complained until my father broke in. “Jake called it,” he said. “End of discussion, Frank.”

We piled into the car, a 1955 Packard Clipper the color of canned peas that my mother had named Lizzie. She christened every automobile we ever owned. A Studebaker she called Zelda. A Pontiac Star Chief was Little Lulu after the comic book character. There were others but her favorite—the favorite of us all except my father—was that Packard. It was huge and powerful and elegant. It had been a gift from my grandfather and was a source of contention between my parents. Though he never came right out and said so I believe it hurt my father’s pride to accept such an extravagant gift from a man he didn’t particularly like and whose values he openly challenged. I understood even then that my grandfather considered my father a failure and not good enough for my mother. Dinner when these two sat at the same table was usually a storm about to break.

We pulled out and drove through the Flats which was what we called the part of New Bremen where we lived. It lay along the Minnesota River below the Heights where the wealthy families resided. There were a lot of people living above us who weren’t rich but no one with money lived on the Flats. We drove past Bobby Cole’s house. Like all the others we passed it was totally dark. I tried to wrap my thinking around the fact of his death which had occurred the day before. I’d never known a kid who died and it felt unnatural and sinister, as if Bobby Cole had been snatched by a monster.

“Is Gus in t-t-trouble?” Jake asked.

“Some but not serious,” my father replied.

“He didn’t bust up anything?”

“Not this time. He got into a fight with another fellow.”

“He does that a lot.”

“Only when he’s drunk,” I said from the backseat. Making excuses for Gus was usually a responsibility that fell to my father but he was noticeably silent.

“He’s drunk a lot then,” Jake said.

“Enough.” My father held up a hand and we shut up.

We drove Tyler Street and turned onto Main. The town was dark and full of delicious possibility. I knew New Bremen as well as I knew my own face but at night things were different. The town wore another face. The city jail sat on the town square. It was the second oldest building in New Bremen after the First Evangelical Lutheran Church. Both were built of the same granite quarried just outside town. My father parked diagonally in front of the jail.

“You two stay here,” he said.

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

He shot me a killing look.

“Sorry. I can’t hold it.”

He gave in so easily I knew he must have been dead tired. “Come on, then. You too, Jake.”

I’d never been inside the jail but it was a place that had always appealed greatly to my imagination. What I found was a small drab room lit by fluorescent tubes and not much different in most respects from my grandfather’s real estate office. There were a couple of desks and a file cabinet and a bulletin board with posters. But there was also along the east wall a holding cell with bars and the cell held a prisoner.

“Thanks for coming, Mr. Drum,” the officer said.

They shook hands. Dad introduced us. Officer Cleve Blake appeared to be younger than my father and wore gold wire-rim glasses and behind them were blue eyes that had an unsettling frankness. Even though it was the middle of a night humid as hell he looked clean and neat in his uniform.

“A little late for you boys to be out, isn’t it?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said to the officer. “Too hot.”

Jake said nothing, which was his usual strategy when he was concerned that he might stutter in public.

I recognized the guy in the cell. Morris Engdahl. A bad sort. Black hair slicked in a ducktail and fond of black leather jackets. He was a year older than my sister who’d just graduated from high school. Engdahl didn’t finish school. The story I’d heard was that he was kicked out for crapping in the locker of a girl who’d turned him down for a date. He drove the coolest set of wheels I’d ever seen. A black 1932 Ford Deuce Coupe with suicide doors and a shiny chrome grille and chrome exhaust and big whitewall tires and flames painted along its sides so that fire ran the length of the car.

“Well, if it ain’t Frankfarter and Howdy D-D-D-Doody,” he said. He had a shiner and when he talked his words came out slurred through a fat lip. From behind the bars he settled his mean eyes on Jake. “How’s it g-g-going, retard?”

Jake had been called all sorts of things because of his stutter. I figured it had to get to him but usually all he did was clam up and stare.

“Jake’s not retarded, Mr. Engdahl,” my father said quietly. “He simply stutters.”

I was surprised Dad knew Morris Engdahl. They didn’t exactly run in the same circles.

“No sh-sh-sh-shit,” Engdahl said.

“That’s enough, Morris,” Officer Blake said.

My father gave Engdahl no more notice and asked the officer what it was all about.

The officer shrugged. “Two drunks, a wrong word. Like putting a match to gasoline.”

“I ain’t no drunk.” Engdahl sat hunched over on the edge of a long metal bench and stared at the floor as if contemplating the advisability of puking there.

“And he’s not old enough to be drinking in a bar, Cleve,” my father pointed out.

“I’ll be talking to the folks at Rosie’s about that,” the officer replied.

Behind a door in the back wall a toilet flushed.

“Much damage?” my father asked.

“Mostly to Morris. They took it out to the parking lot.”

The door in the back wall opened and a man walked out still working at the zipper on his pants.

“Doyle, I was just telling these folks how you came to bring in Engdahl and Gus.”

The other man sat down and put his feet on the desk. He wasn’t dressed in a uniform but from his look of comfort in that jailhouse I understood he was a policeman too. He said, “Yeah I was off duty at Rosie’s. Watched ’em going at it in the bar, mouthing off to each other. When they took it outside, I figured it was time to break up the party.”

My father spoke to Officer Blake: “All right if I take Gus home now?”

“Sure. He’s in back.” The policeman reached into the desk drawer for keys. “Crying shame about the Cole kid. I heard you spent most of yesterday with his folks.”

“Yes,” my father told him.

“I’ve got to say I’d much rather have my job than yours.”

“You know that whole thing’s got me wondering,” Doyle, the off-duty officer, said. “I’ve seen that kid on those tracks hundreds of times. He loved trains, I guess. Can’t figure how he came to get himself killed by one.”

Officer Blake said, “What do you mean?”

“I talked to Jim Gant. He was the first deputy on the scene. Gant said it looked like the kid had just been sitting on the tracks. Didn’t move at all when the train came. Real strange, you know? He wasn’t deaf.”

“Maybe he was retarded like Howdy Doody there,” Engdahl said from his cell. “Didn’t know enough to get his butt off that rail.”

Doyle said, “One more word out of you and I’m coming in there and kick your ass.”

Officer Blake found the keys he was searching for and shut the drawer. “Are they pursuing it?”

“Far as I know, nope. Officially an accident. No witnesses to say otherwise.”

Officer Blake said, “You boys stay out here. And, Morris, you behave yourself.”

My father asked, “Is it okay if my son uses your bathroom, Cleve?”

“Sure,” the officer answered. He unlocked the metal door in the back wall and led my father through.

I didn’t have to use the bathroom. It had simply been a ruse to get inside the jail. I was afraid Doyle might make a point of it, but he didn’t seem at all interested.

Jake stood staring hard at Engdahl. Staring knives.

“What are you looking at, retard?”

“He’s not retarded,” I said.

“Yeah and your sister’s not a harelip and your old man’s not a friggin’ pussy.” He laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.

I asked Doyle, “What did you mean about Bobby?”

He was tall and lean and looked tough as jerky. He wore his hair in a crew cut and his head was shiny with sweat from the heat of the night. He had ears every bit as big as Jake’s but he wasn’t the kind of guy anybody in their right mind would dare call Howdy Doody. He said, “You know him?”

“Nice kid, right? But slow.”

“Slow enough he couldn’t get out of the way of that train,” Engdahl said.

“Shut up, Engdahl.” Doyle looked back at me. “You play on the tracks?”

“No,” I lied.

He looked at Jake. “You?”

“No,” I answered for Jake.

“Good thing. Because there are bums down there. Men not like the decent folks in New Bremen. You ever get approached by one of them men you come straight here and tell me. Ask for Officer Doyle.”

“You think that’s what happened to Bobby?” I was thunderstruck. It would never have occurred to me that his death wasn’t an accident. But then I wasn’t a trained policeman like Officer Doyle.

He began popping the knuckles of his fingers one by one. “I’m just saying you watch out for guys drifting along those tracks. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goblins’ll get you if you don’t watch out,” Engdahl said. “They love tender meat like you and Retard.”

Doyle stood up. He walked to the cell and motioned Morris Engdahl to come to the bars. Engdahl drew his whole self onto the bench and pressed to the wall.

“That’s what I thought,” Doyle said.

The metal door opened and Officer Blake came out. My father followed. He supported Gus who was stumbling. Gus seemed drunker than Engdahl but there wasn’t a mark on him.

“You’re really letting him go?” Engdahl said. “That’s friggin’ unfair.”

“I called your father,” the officer said. “He told me a night in jail would do you good. Take it up with him.”

“Get the door, Frank,” my father said and then looked at the officer. “Thank you, Cleve. I appreciate this.”

“Keeps things around here simpler. But, Gus, you’ve got to watch yourself. The chief’s at the end of his rope with you.”

Gus grinned drunkenly. “He wantsa talk to me, tell him I’ll be happy to discuss it over a beer.”

I held the door and my father hauled Gus out. I looked back where Morris Engdahl sat on the hard bench. Now, forty years later, I realize that what I saw was a kid not all that much older than me. Thin and angry and blind and lost and shut up behind iron bars not for the first time or the last. I probably should have felt for him something other than I did, which was hatred. I closed the door.

At the car Gus straightened up suddenly and turned to my father. “Thanks, Captain.”

“Get in the car.”

Gus said, “What about my motorcycle?”

“Where is it?”

“At Rosie’s.”

“You can get it tomorrow when you’re sober. Get in the car.”

Gus swayed a little. He looked up at the moon. His face was bloodless in the pale light. “Why does he do it, Captain?”

“God. Why does he take the sweet ones?”

“He takes us all in the end, Gus.”

“But a kid?”

“Is that what the fight was about? Bobby Cole?”

“Engdahl called him a retard, Captain. Said he was better off dead. I couldn’t let it pass.” Gus shook his head in a bewildered way. “So how come, Captain?”

“I don’t know, Gus.”

“Isn’t that your job? Knowing the why of all this crap?” Gus seemed disappointed. Then he said, “Dead. What’s that mean?”

Jake spoke up. “It means he won’t have to w-w-worry about everybody making f-f-f-fun of him.”

Gus eyed Jake and blinked. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s the reason. What do you think, Captain?”

Gus nodded as if that had satisfied him. He bent toward the open car door to get into the back seat but instead stood there making awful retching sounds.

“Ah, Gus. All over the upholstery,” my father said.

Gus straightened up and pulled his shirttail from his pants and wiped his mouth. “Sorry, Captain. Didn’t see it coming.”

“Get in front,” my father said. He turned to me. “Frank, you and Jake are going to have to walk home. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No, sir. We’ll be fine. But could we have the tire iron from the trunk? For protection?”

New Bremen wasn’t at all the kind of town where you’d need a tire iron for protection but I nodded toward Jake, whose face had gone a little white at the prospect of walking home in all that dark, and my father understood. He popped the trunk and handed me the iron. “Don’t dawdle,” he said.

He climbed into the driver’s side. “You have to puke again, Gus, puke out the window. Understand?”

“I read you loud and clear, Captain.” He smiled gamely and lifted a hand to us as my father drove away.

Under the moon we stood on the empty square. The city jail was the only lit building we could see. On the opposite side of the green the courthouse clock bonged four times.

“It’ll be light in an hour,” I said.

“I don’t want to walk home,” Jake said. “I’m tired.”

“Then stay here.”

I started away. After a moment Jake came too.

We didn’t go home. Not directly. At Sandstone Street I turned off Main.

Jake said, “Where are you going?”

“You’ll see.”

“I want to go home.”

“Fine. Go home.”

“I don’t want to go home alone.”

“Then come on. You’ll like this, I swear.”

“Like what?”

A block off Main on the corner of Walnut was a bar with a sign over the door. Rosie’s. A ’53 Indian Chief with a sidecar was in the lot. Gus’s motorcycle. Only one automobile was still parked there. A black Deuce Coupe with fire painted along its sides. I approached that beauty and spent a moment running my hand admiringly over the slope of the front wheel well where a silver snake of moonlight shot along the black enamel. Then I set myself and swung the tire iron and smashed the left headlight.

“What are you doing?” Jake cried.

I walked to the other headlight and once again the sound of shattering glass broke the stillness of the night.

“Here,” I said and offered the tire iron to my brother. “The rear lights are all yours.”

“No,” he said.

“This guy called you a retard. You and Bobby Cole. And he called Ariel a harelip and Dad a pussy. You don’t want to break something on his car?”

“No.” He looked at me then at the tire iron then at the car. “Well, maybe.”

I handed that magic wand of revenge to Jake. He walked to the back of Morris Engdahl’s precious set of wheels. He glanced at me once for reassurance then swung. He missed and banged metal and the tire iron bounced out of his hands.

“Jeez,” I said. “What a spaz.”

“Let me try again.”

I picked up the tire iron and handed it to him. This time he did the deed and danced back from the spray of red glass. “Can I do the other one?” he pleaded.

When he’d finished we stood back and admired our work until we heard the screen door of the house across the street squeak open and a guy shout, “Hey, what’s going on over there?”

We tore down Sandstone back to Main and down Main toward Tyler. We didn’t stop until we hit the Flats.

Jake bent over and held his ribs. “I got a stitch in my side,” he gasped.

I was breathing hard too. I put my arm around my brother. “You were great back there. A regular Mickey Mantle.”

“Think we’ll get in trouble?”

“Who cares? Didn’t that feel good?”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “It felt real good.”

The Packard was parked in the church lot across the street from our house. The light over the side door was on and I figured Dad was still inside putting Gus to bed. I set the tire iron on the Packard’s hood and we walked to the door, which opened onto a set of stairs that led to the church basement where Gus had a room next to the boiler.

Gus wasn’t related to us by blood but in a strange way he was family. He’d fought beside my father in the Second World War, an experience, my father contended, that made them closer than brothers. They stayed in touch and whenever Dad updated us on his old friend it was usually to report another in a long litany of missteps. Then one day just after we’d moved to New Bremen, Gus had shown up at our doorstep, a little drunk and out of work and with everything he owned stuffed in a pack in the sidecar of his motorcycle. My father had taken him in, given him a place to live, found him work, and Gus had been with us ever since. He was a source of great disagreement between my parents but only one of many. Jake and I liked him immensely. Maybe it was because he talked to us as if we weren’t just kids. Or because he didn’t have much and didn’t seem to want more and didn’t appear to be bothered by his questionable circumstances. Or because on occasion he drank to excess and got himself into trouble from which my father would predictably extricate him, which made him seem more like an errant older brother than an adult.

His room in the church basement wasn’t much. A bed. A chest of drawers. A night stand and lamp. A mirror. A squat three-shelf case full of books. He’d put a little red rug on the cement floor of his room that added a dash of color. There was a window at ground level but not much light came through. On the other side of the basement was a small bathroom which Dad and Gus had put in themselves. That’s where we found them. While Gus knelt at the toilet stool and puked my father stood behind him and waited patiently. Jake and I lingered under the bare bulb in the middle of the basement. My father didn’t seem to notice us.

“Still ralfing,” I whispered to Jake.

“You know. R-a-l-f,” I said and drew out the word as if I was vomiting.

“That’s it, Captain.” With some difficulty Gus stood and my father handed him a wet cloth to wipe his face.

My father flushed the toilet and walked Gus to his room. He helped Gus out of his soiled shirt and pants. Gus lay down on his bed. He wore only his undershirt and shorts. It was cooler in the basement than outside and my father drew the top sheet over his friend.

“Thanks, Captain,” Gus murmured as his eyes drifted closed.

“Go to sleep.”

Then Gus said something I’d never heard him say before. He said, “Captain, you’re still a son of a bitch. Always will be.”

“I know, Gus.”

“They’re all dead because of you, Captain. Always will be.”

“Just sleep.”

Gus was snoring almost immediately. My father turned to where we stood in the middle of the basement. “Go on back to bed,” he said. “I’m going to stay and pray for a while.”

“The car’s full of puke,” I said. “Mom’ll go berserk.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

My father went up to the sanctuary. Jake and I went out the side door. I still wasn’t ready to call it a night. I sat on the front steps of the church and Jake sat there too. He was tired and leaned against me.

“What did Gus mean?” he said. “Dad killed them all. What did he mean?”

I was wondering about that too. I said, “I don’t know.”

The birds had started to chatter in the trees. Above the hills that rimmed the valley of the Minnesota River I could see a thin line of vermilion in the sky that was the approach of dawn. And I saw something else. On the other side of the street a familiar figure separated itself from the cover of the lilac bushes that edged our yard. I watched my older sister sneak across the lawn and slip into our house through the back door. Oh the secrets of the night.

I sat on the steps of my father’s church thinking how much I loved the dark. The taste of what it offered sweet on the tongue of my imagination. The delicious burn of trespass on my conscience. I was a sinner. I knew that without a doubt. But I was not alone. And the night was the accomplice of us all.

I said, “Jake?” But he didn’t answer. He was asleep.

My father would pray for a long time. It was too late for him to go back to bed and too early to fix breakfast. He was a man with a son who stuttered and another probably on his way to becoming a juvenile delinquent and a daughter with a harelip who sneaked in at night from God knew where and a wife who resented his profession. Yet I knew it was not for himself or for any of us that he was praying. More likely it was for the parents of Bobby Cole. And for Gus. And probably for an asshole named Morris Engdahl. Praying on their behalf. Praying I suppose for the awful grace of God.

Audio Excerpt

Audio excerpt, discussion guide.

Introduction

In 1961 New Bremen, Minnesota, all is quiet and serene. The Minnesota River flows through the countryside, the town barber knows everyone’s name, and folks dutifully attend church every Sunday. But that serenity is thrown into turmoil as a series of tragic deaths lead thirteen-year-old Frank Drum and his family on a hunt for terrible truths. But at what cost comes wisdom? In this powerful novel from the author of the Cork O’Connor mysteries, a boy must leave his childhood behind and confront the dark nature of the adult world and its myriad moral questions: What secrets will destroy us? How do we deal with grief? And what solace is there in the ordinary grace of the world?

Topics & Questions for Discussion

1. Discuss the final revelation of Ariel’s whereabouts. Had you guessed correctly?

2. Much of Frank and Jake’s knowledge comes from overhearing and snooping. Which instance of eavesdropping provided them with the heaviest, most important information? Is there a particular overheard conversation that led most directly to the loss of their childhood innocence?

3. Along those same lines, in what ways have the two boys been transformed by story’s end?

4. Who is ultimately responsible for the death of Karl Brandt?

5. A number of characters carry secrets that eventually come to light. Was there a certain catharsis once they were able to unload the truth? Did it do them any good? Consider especially Frank’s father, whose deeds in the war remained a mystery. Is there some merit to carrying the burden of a secret alone?

6. Though the title of the novel refers to a particular “ordinary grace,” what other small graces did you find in the book?

7. Why does Ruth leave her family? Do you think she was truly mad at Nathan? At God? Discuss the ways in which she and the other characters deal with their grief over Ariel.

8. Do you agree with Frank’s insight in the epilogue that, “there is no such thing as a true event?” What makes a story real? How do we deal with varying perspectives and reflections of history?

9. Do you think Frank had a responsibility to tell Emil about Lise? Was there merit to Jake’s argument that her fenced-in estate was prison enough?

10. Do you forgive Emil for his moment of indiscretion? Is he in some way to blame for everything that happened in New Bremen?

11. Frank and Jake often make a case to come along to the sheriff’s office, crime scenes, and pivotal confrontations during the upheaval in New Bremen. Should they have been allowed to bear witness to these things? Should children be shielded from the occasional darkness of adult life?

12. What do you make of Gus? Is he in some ways the backbone (though not a true relative) of the Drum family?

13. Do you agree with the sentiment of the older Warren Redstone? Is it true that the departed are never far from us?

Enhance Your Book Club

1. Tragedy and controversy will occasionally befall a small town like New Bremen. Has something similar ever happened in your town? Discuss the details of that incident, and how/if it changed things for you.

2. Much of our perspective in Ordinary Grace comes through Frank and Jake’s by-foot travels throughout town, through the hidden passages and remote clearings. Make a similar journey through your own neighborhood. What places are ripe for a secret? Where can you go for peace and meditation?

3. List and discuss the ordinary graces and miracles you’ve experienced. How do small moments help us deal with larger-than-life trouble?

4. Read any one of the novels in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mystery series and discuss how the suspense of the Minnesota that O’Connor inhabits compares to the more pastoral mystery of the Drum family.

Book Trailer

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Interview with Aunt Agatha’s Read the Interview »

A Conversation with William Kent Krueger

Ordinary Grace is a departure from your New York Times bestselling Cork O’Connor series. What made you write it? This was a story that, when it came to me, I couldn’t ignore. It was that simple. I’d been wanting for some time to do a piece of writing that would allow me to revisit the past, to evoke a time that was important in my own life. I also wanted to write something that would allow me to explore the whole question of the spiritual journey, something that’s always been very important to me. When the character of Frank Drum, the minister’s son and the story’s narrator, formed fully in my thinking, Ordinary Grace seemed to drop out of heaven right into my lap. It was so compelling that it haunted me constantly until I finally put it to paper.

Did you have an experience in your youth that you can pinpoint as a turning point in your life? Absolutely. It was the summer I was thirteen years old. For many years, my father had headed the personnel division of a large oil company headquartered in Ohio. But that summer, because his values were so at odds with the corporate sensibility, he was let go. He decided to return to teaching high school English, which had always been his first love, and we moved to Hood River, a lovely small town in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Life for the Krueger family changed dramatically. We were all nervous about what the future might hold. My father was concerned about his ability to support a family on a teacher’s salary. My mother was worried about the stifling effect a small town might have on all of us. And as the child of a teacher, I quickly discovered that I was always under scrutiny. Yet, it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. I used a lot of what I learned there to create the town of New Bremen in Ordinary Grace. And because this was such a memorable period for me, I was able to tap many of my own adolescent impressions and express them through Frank Drum.

How can you think of such interesting books? What was the inspiration for this story? When you accept that you’re a storyteller, it’s as if you open a door and stories begin to pour in. They come from all kinds of places—your own experiences, the experiences others relate to you, family reminisces, newspapers and news reports, and sometimes simply from the ethers. The question always is which of these stories is the one you want to tell, which is the one that most compels you at the moment. When the town of New Bremen coalesced in my imagination and the voice of Frank Drum came to me and I heard the first words of the story he would tell—“All the dying that summer began with the death of a child”—I was hooked.

Can you tell us about your writing process. How did you go about writing Ordinary Grace ? How long did it take you? In some ways, Ordinary Grace was problematic. It wasn’t a contracted manuscript. In fact, I wasn’t sure it would be the kind of book my publisher would even want. Many years ago, I wrote another book that wasn’t part of the Cork O’Connor series, a novel titled The Devil’s Bed . It was pretty good, but it sold more poorly than any of the books in my series, primarily because Cork O’Connor wasn’t in it. After that sales debacle, I was pretty sure my publisher would only want to see series books coming from me. So when I decided to write a very different kind of story, I knew it was risky. I had contractual obligations to meet with the Cork O’Connor series, and there was no guarantee that if I wrote this manuscript, I could sell it. But it was a story I had to write. And so, I devoted every opportunity available to me between my contractual obligations to the writing of Ordinary Grace. I took me almost three years to complete the work.

You’re a master at establishing a time and a place, but the emotional lives of the characters you’ve created in Ordinary Grace are so vivid. Are they based on anyone in your own life? In a way, they’re my real family. My father wasn’t a small town minister, but he was an idealistic English teacher in a small town. My mother was a frustrated musician. My brothers and my sister and I were all very close, but there was a broad difference in our ages, so our individual experiences were very different in that small town where my father taught. I tried to suggest all of this in the lives of the Drum family in Ordinary Grace.

Why did you choose to leave what happened between Nathan and Gus during the war so vague? I grew up post-World War Two. My father and the fathers of most of the kids I knew had fought in that war. The scars weren’t always visible, but they were there. My own father was terribly affected by his war experience and I knew that he carried some terrible guilt, which he never really shared with his children. The father of one of my good friends in college had served on the U.S.S. Indianapolis , the warship that went down in the Pacific and so many of her crew were killed in shark attacks afterward, My friend told me that his father often woke up from nightmares screaming. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder wasn’t recognized then, and our fathers seldom talked about their experiences. While writing Ordinary Grace , I planned at some point to let the reader in on what exactly it was that haunted Nathan Drum and Gus. In the end, I decided to leave the specifics unexplained, hoping in this way to suggest that the ghosts that haunted them were the ghosts that haunted all our fathers.

As you were writing did you identify more with Frank? Jake? I’m split here. I invested a lot of my own sensibility in Frank, but in my own life, I was the younger brother, so I knew that experience intimately. I suppose, in a way, they’re both some of me and, at the same time, they’re their own characters. What I wanted to capture in these two brothers is the deep love that can flow between siblings. Their relationship, in many ways, is the rock on which Ordinary Grace is built.

Will you write more about any of the characters in Ordinary Grace ? What can your fans expect next? Ordinary Grace was always meant to be a stand alone. I have no plans to revisit the Drum family. But I’ve always had an idea that there would be more stories set in southern Minnesota in an earlier time. I’m currently at work on a project I consider a sister novel to Ordinary Grace. It’s called This Tender Land and is set in a place called Black Earth County in 1957. Readers won’t see it for a couple of years at least.

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Ordinary Grace: A Novel Kindle Edition

Print length 322 pages
Language English
Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
Publisher Atria Books
Publication date March 26, 2013
File size 6598 KB
Page Flip Enabled
Word Wise Enabled
Enhanced typesetting Enabled
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ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008J2G5Y6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Reprint edition (March 26, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 26, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 6598 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages
#51 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
#72 in Historical Mystery
#89 in Historical Literary Fiction

About the author

William kent krueger.

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers.

"Ordinary Grace," his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. "Manitou Canyon," number fifteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in September 2016. Visit his website at www.williamkentkrueger.com.

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Ordinary Grace

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About The Author

William Kent Krueger is the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember , This Tender Land , Ordinary Grace (winner of the Edgar Award for best novel), and the original audio novella The Levee , as well as nineteen acclaimed books in the Cork O’Connor mystery series, including Lightning Strike and Fox Creek . He lives in the Twin Cities with his family. Learn more at WilliamKentKrueger.com.

Product Details

Publisher: Atria Books (March 4, 2014)
Length: 336 pages
ISBN13: 9781451645859

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Raves and Reviews

“Pitch-perfect, wonderfully evocative. . . . In Frank Drum’s journey away from the shores of childhood—a journey from which he can never return—we recognize the heartbreaking price of adulthood and its ‘wisdoms.’ I loved this book.”

– Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Live by Night and The Given Day

“Krueger’s elegy for innocence is a deeply memorable tale.”

– Washington Post

“A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God. An award-winning author for his long-running Cork O’ Connor series, Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a standalone novel that shares much with his other work.... 'the awful grace of God,' as it manifests itself within the novel, would try the faith of the most devout believer. Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.”

– Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“...elegiac, evocative.... a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.”

– Publishers Weekly

“Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace . . . . This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile.”

– Huffington Post

– BookReporter.com

“My best read so far this year.”

– ReviewingtheEvidence.com

“Not often does a story feel at once fresh and familiar. But Ordinary Grace , a new novel from William Kent Krueger, is both, and it is affecting.”

– Denver Post

“ Ordinary Grace is engaging from the first page, a quiet novel that unfurls its sad story slowly, but eloquently, leaving its mark on your heart.”

– The Missourian

“There’s such a quiet beauty in his prose and such depth to his characters that I was completely captivated.”

– Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A superb literary novel.”

– New York Journal of Books

“...the tone is much like To Kill a Mockingbird , with its combination of dread and nostalgia.”

– Detroit News

“Everything about this book, from language to ideas to Aeschylus’s epigram is beautiful and you’ll think about it long after you’re finished reading.”

– The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“I realized within pages this would be one of the best books I’ve read in recent years. The gathering threat and its consummation are satisfying and meaningful. This is an intelligent and compelling story told with great heart.... A perfect book club read, truly a book to love and read more than once. Absolutely recommended.”

– Historical Novel Society

– Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“Sometimes a work of fiction just comes to you, sits in your soul, touches your life experiences and then is hard to remember as fiction. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kruger is such a novel."

– Capital Journal

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COMMENTS

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace is a stand alone novel and is the Winner of the 2014 EDGAR Award for Best Novel, a Winner of the 2014 DILYS Award and was A SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2013. This book is narrated by Frank Drum, 40 years after a fateful summer when he was thirteen years old in New Bremen, Minnesota.
ORDINARY GRACE
Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike. 3. Pub Date: March 26, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-4516-4582-8. Page Count: 320.
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger: Summary and reviews
Ordinary Grace is an entertaining mystery with some rather emotional content at its heart. In addition to an engaging plot, the book is thought-provoking and, at times, quite poignant. Those looking for a character-driven mystery with content that goes beyond the standard police procedural will find this one worth perusing, and book clubs in particular will find the novel provides many topics ...
Ordinary Grace [Book Review]
The summer of 1961 should have been another ordinary summer for thirteen-year-old Frank Drum, but it was a summer of hardships, tragedy, grief, adult problems, and questions of faith. Told from Frank's perspective forty years later, Ordinary Grace is a poignant coming-of-age story with elements of mystery and suspense.
a book review by Carolyn Haley: Ordinary Grace: A Novel
Altogether, Ordinary Grace forms a superb literary novel. It lingers in the mind long after closing the cover, and beckons one to read again for the sheer pleasure of the experience. Carolyn Haley is a broadly experienced writer and editor whose business, DocuMania, provides production support for editors, writers, and designers.
Book Review: ORDINARY GRACE by William Kent Krueger
William Kent Krueger, author of ORDINARY GRACE, gives us a line by Blaise Pascal,* then takes literary reference a step further, launching the novel with a Prologue written in the voice of the story's narrator—a grown man recalling events from the summer he was thirteen. The narrator, Frank Drum, tells us that his father (who we soon learn ...
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Author interviews, book reviews and lively book commentary are found here. Content includes books from bestselling, midlist and debut authors. The Book Report Network. Our Other Sites. Bookreporter; ... Much of our perspective in ORDINARY GRACE comes through Frank and Jake's by-foot travels throughout town, through the hidden passages and ...
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace book. Read 14,707 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. "That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was ...
Book Review
Fiction Book Review. 22 Nov. In 'Ordinary grace' by William Kent Krueger, Frank Drumm is 13 years old and lives in New Bremen, Minnesota where it's summertime, a summer that begins with the death of a child on railroad tracks outside the town. More death is to follow, in a summer that will change lives in the small town forever.
Review of Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
An irresistible narrator and a strong sense of time and place distinguish this murder mystery set in the Midwest of the 1960s. William Kent Krueger's latest novel is an atmospheric murder mystery set in a fictional small town in Minnesota. The tragedies that unfold during the summer of 1961 are described forty years after by the now 53-year-old ...
Ordinary Grace
ORDINARY GRACE is a bit different, and not merely due to Cork's absence. It is a stand-alone work, a coming-of-age story that I sense is at least partially biographical, by turns heartwarming and heart-rending, a very spiritual book shot through with metaphors and turns of phrase that demand to be noted, marked and re-read long after the last ...
"Ordinary grace" by William Kent Krueger
Then 'ordinary' seems like bliss. " Ordinary grace " is the first novel I've read by William Kent Kruger . Renowned for his Cork O'Connor mystery series, this is one of his 'stand-alone' efforts. I have to admit that after reading this novel I questioned myself why I had not tried this author sooner. Set in 1961, this novel was ...
Review: 'Ordinary Grace,' by William Kent Krueger
In "Ordinary Grace," the novel's middle-aged narrator, Frank Drum, tells of the summer when, at 13, a child being killed by a train was the catalyst for a series of tragic events that brought his ...
Ordinary Grace Summary and Study Guide
The novel Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger, is set in the fictional Minnesota town of New Bremen, in the summer of 1961.The plotcenters on a quartet of deaths that take place in and around the town over the course of that summer. The book is narrated by middle child Frank Drum; its narrative present is 2001, when Frank is fifty-three years old and living in St. Paul, Minnesota, though ...
Ordinary Grace (Krueger)
Our Reading Guide for Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger includes Book Club Discussion Questions, Book Reviews, Plot Summary-Synopsis and Author Bio. HOME; ABOUT; CONTACT; Search Go . Getting Started ... Book Reviews: Discussion Questions: Full Version: Print: Page 1 of 4. Ordinary Grace William Kent Krueger, 2013 Atria Books 336 pp. ISBN ...
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
Ordinary Grace is fabulous a book, one I didn't want to end. I think it was the beautifully developed characters, so believable and real that grabbed me. Or maybe it was the 1960's setting vividly depicted and perfectly captured, a time when young people had more freedom and responsibilities, when life at least seemed to be slower paced and ...
Review: Ordinary Grace
Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger. New York: Atria Books, 2013. Summary: Two boys in a rural Minnesota town encounter a series of deaths, including one within their family, and discover something of the "awful grace of God." The writing of William Kent Krueger has been my discovery of this summer.
Ordinary Grace
And what solace is there in the ordinary grace of the world? Ordinary Grace. by William Kent Krueger. Publication Date: March 4, 2014. Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Mystery. Paperback: 336 pages. Publisher: Atria Books. ISBN-10: 1451645856. ISBN-13: 9781451645859.
Ordinary Grace: Krueger, William Kent: 9781451645859: Amazon.com: Books
Ordinary Grace. Paperback - March 4, 2014. by William Kent Krueger (Author) 4.5 42,366 ratings. Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. See all formats and editions. Anthony AwardWinner, 2014. Edgar AwardWinner, 2014. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.
Ordinary Grace (Krueger)
Book Reviews Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace…This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some ...
Ordinary Grace
Ordinary Grace. On Sale Now. New York Times bestseller. Winner, Edgar Award for Best Novel. Winner, Anthony Award for Best Novel. Winner, Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel. Winner, Barry Award for Best Novel. One of the 100 Best Mysteries and Thriller Books of All Time - Time Magazine. A School Library Journal Best Book of 2013.
Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Ordinary Grace
Ordinary Grace is a beautifully written chronicle through grief and loss and grace. Frank Drum reflects on a summer from 40 years ago, a summer filled with exploration, death, and revelation, a summer when Frank was only 13 years old. ... Book reviews & recommendations : IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities: IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment ...
Merit Floerke's review of Ordinary Grace
4/5: This was a beautiful story with flawed, complex characters and so many unexpected turns. Very enjoyable. Have only read a couple of his books but would highly recommend both and will continue to read.
Ordinary Grace: A Novel Kindle Edition
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE 2014 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL WINNER OF THE 2014 DILYS AWARD A SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2013 From New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger, a brilliant new novel about a young man, a small town, and murder in the summer of 1961. "That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it.
Ordinary Grace
William Kent Krueger is the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember, This Tender Land, Ordinary Grace (winner of the Edgar Award for best novel), and the original audio novella The Levee, as well as nineteen acclaimed books in the Cork O'Connor mystery series, including Lightning Strike and Fox Creek.He lives in the Twin Cities with his family.

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Ordinary Grace

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An irresistible narrator and a strong sense of time and place distinguish this murder mystery set in the Midwest of the 1960s

Beyond the Book: The Year, 1961

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