A slow, summer read – my latest read is Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. This book is a New York Times Bestseller and Winner of the 2014 Edgar Award For Best Novel.
It is a story of a young man, a small town, and murder in the summer of 1961.
Ordinary Grace transports you through beautifully written scenes to a time of innocence shattered in the life of a boy growing up in a small town of New Bremen, Minnesota.
Frank Drum is 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 novel about a boy standing at the door of his manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him.
I was moved by this book, but I also felt that the characters were stereotypical and I did figure out who the killer was before the reveal.
While not a page turner, it is an unforgettable novel which casts the light on the hard price of wisdom and the ordinary grace of God.
