Ordinary Grace: Summary and book reviews of Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger, plus links to an excerpt from Ordinary Grace and a biography of William Kent Krueger.
"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.
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 for discussion. (Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
Booklist
This coming-of-age story is obviously an attempt to show how grace can work through the fissures of suffering. While the setting is well rendered, the characters are too flat, and Krueger keeps striking the same monologist's meditative note throughout, while most readers will long for variety in style.
Publishers Weekly
The small-town milieu is rendered in picturesque detail, accurate down to period-appropriate TV programs, for what becomes a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.
Kirkus
Starred Review. 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...A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.
Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Live by Night and The Given Day
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 it's 'wisdoms.' I loved this book.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by CarolK Ordinary Faith Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary Grace visits long ago events in childhood from an adult perspective.
Frank, the narrator of... Read More
Rated of 5
by Nikki Don't miss this one! There was nothing ordinary about the grace with which this book was written. I would've happily continued reading as many pages as William Kent Krueger had written. It will be a while before another book measures up to this one. Don't miss it!
Rated of 5
by Becky H ORDINARY GRACE by William Krueger Frank, a thirteen year old on the cusp of manhood, is the main character in William K Krueger’s book “Ordinary Grace.” On its surface it is a tale of death - a murder, an accident, in war, stupidly or deliberately done, of age or illness. On a much... Read More
Ordinary Grace is set in the Midwestern United States in 1961. Although it was a time of peace and prosperity for much of the country, many important events were taking place around the world that year:
January 20:
43-year-old John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States, still the youngest person ever to hold the office.
January 31: Ham the Astrochimp became the first primate launched into outer space. The Cameroon-born Ham (which is an acronym for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center where Ham was prepped), was five years old at the time. He returned successfully to earth and retired to the National Zoo in Washington. He died in 1983 at the age of 26.
February 9: The Beatles performed for the first time at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England....
Jerome, a young artist on a remote island retreat, discovers the body of an old man, Andrew Woodman, frozen in the ice. One year after the body is discovered, Sylvia Bradley – a withdrawn, sheltered woman whose secret affair with Andrew changed her world forever – decides to learn more about her lover’s mysterious disappearance....
The emotionally wrenching tale of three brothers and the brutal act that irrevocably changes their lives.
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A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
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Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Live by Night and The Given Day
of 5
by CarolK
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43-year-old John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President of the United States, still the youngest person ever to hold the office.
