This is a book review written to be given to the Fortnightly Book Club

“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. ‘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.’” So says Frank Drum, the narrator of Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger, reflecting 40 years back to the summer he was 13. This reflection sets the scene for a novel that won the Edgar Award for best mystery novel, and yet it is so much more.

Yes, it is about the solving of a murder mystery, but, at the same time, it is a tale related in format, voice, tone, and mood to To Kill a Mockingbird, another novel told by an adult narrator looking back at events that occurred years earlier, shaping the narrator’s journey to the loss of innocence. Frank Drum, middle child of Ruth and Nathan Drum, lives in an idyllic town in rural 1961 Minnesota, where he spends his time playing baseball, riding his bike with his younger brother, and playing down by the river underneath the train trestle. He is happy with his Methodist minister father and musical mother and slightly in awe of his older sister who will be attending Julliard in the fall. But this safe cocoon of family and friends begins to unravel with the death of another young boy who is killed while he is on the train trestle by an oncoming train.

Krueger has populated New Bremen, Minnesota, with a memorable cast of characters: the Korean War vet who drinks too much and gets by doing handyman jobs; the blind, renowned musician and his deaf, autistic sister; the bullying sheriff’s deputy; the closeted, gay young man; the abused wife. All of these people are described by the author that creates vivid pictures for the reader.

Frank makes us see his mother Ruth, one of the central characters, as a gifted musician who “sang slowly and richly and delivered the heart of that great spiritual as if she was delivering heaven itself and her face was beautiful and full of peace. . . And when she finished the sound of the breeze through the doorway was like the sigh of angels well pleased.” In spite of this gift, she is not particularly satisfied with her life as a preacher’s wife and remains somewhat disappointed that her husband did not finish law school. Her marriage and emotional stability are severely tested by the events of this summer and its tragedies. Of her husband, Frank tells us, “People said he was a good preacher though not as fiery as some of his congregation would have liked. He spoke earnestly, never passionately. He was a man of ideas and he never tried with overpowering rhetoric or dramatics to muscle people into believing.” Frank’s father is better at ministering to the needs of his congregation than to the needs of his wife who does not share his unquestioning belief in God. Obviously, this is a source of conflict that is important in the second half of the novel.

In addition to Krueger’s characterization skills, he is also masterful at describing settings and establishing atmosphere. A Minnesota river valley is described in this way: “In summer the land along its banks is green with soy beans and cornstalks and field of rye that roll in the wind with the liquidity of an ocean. There are stands of old deciduous trees whose branches cup the nests of Forster’s terns and black terns and great blue herons and egrets and bald eagles and warblers and other birds so ordinary and profuse that they fill the air like dandelion fluff.” Frank recounts a summer storm: “I went to the window and saw that an electrical storm was sliding north of the valley . . . I could see quite well the silver bolts of lightning forged on the anvil of the great thunderhead . . .I . . . sat on the porch steps. A wind cooler than anything I’d felt in days breathed into my face and I watched the storm as I might have watched the approach and passing of a fierce and beautiful animal.” Because Krueger lives in Minnesota and appreciates nature, he perfectly captures the beauty of the place. This familiarity with Minnesota is illustrated even more in his Cork O’Connor series–but that’s a whole new book review.

As an English teacher, I read each novel and play I required of my students every year I assigned them. What I found was that each time I read the work, there was something I had missed or forgotten the previous times. That is what happened with my second reading of Ordinary Grace. This time what I noticed was the theme of the injuries caused by war. In 1961, the year in which the novel is set, the term PTSD had not been invented. However, many of the adult male characters are obviously suffering PTSD caused by their experiences in the Korean War. Nathan Drum, the minister and veteran himself who will not talk about his war experience, says about another man who physically abuses his wife and son, “He spent time in a North Korean POW camp. . . He still has nightmares. He drinks because he thinks it helps him deal with the nightmares. Every man handles in a different way the damage war did to him.” Another man, Emil Brandt, who is a gifted composer and pianist, was blinded in the war, says, “Sometimes I think that it wasn’t so much the war as what we took into the war. Whatever cracks were already there the war forced apart, and what we might otherwise have kept inside came spilling out.” In total, six of the male characters were changed by war and have to learn to cope with those changes.

I am not mentioning who dies by accident, nature, suicide and murder. To do so would ruin the unfolding of the plot for you the reader. Know that by the end of the novel, a family is saved by an ordinary grace. “We turn, three men bound by love, by history, by circumstance, and most certainly by the awful grace of God, and together walk a narrow lane where headstones press close all around, reminding me gently of Warren Redstone’s parting wisdom . . . The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is single breath, one final puff of air.”