Ordinary Grace

This is a gentle, tender, yet gripping story of a family, its faith, and their reckoning with a murder in their small Minnesota town.

It is a mystery whose solution is completely unexpected and, yet, well prepared for, a tribute to a deft and accomplished writer. It was amazing how everything got resolved in a way I couldn’t imagine—so well done.

I also loved the fact that it was set in a small town in Minnesota, a place that means a great deal to me, and Krueger does it justice; the gentle way of life disrupted by a… show more.

I remember as a boy weeping at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, not because the dogs died, but because Billy Colman returned decades later to find the rusted axe from that fateful night still stuck in the tree. Great books show us time isn’t linear; it’s like an accordion folding over on itself, so a pivotal moment from our past can, in some mysterious way, always feel present. Here. Somehow on the tip of time’s tongue. It makes you ache with the fullness of your story, your life. The ending of Ordinary Grace did that… show more.

This story takes place over the summer of 1961 written in the voice of the narrator reflecting back 30 years to when he was 13 years old. I loved the way it took me back to that era, a time when summers as a child were spent outdoors with minimal adult supervision. Adventure, discovery, and imagination were at one’s fingertips. A tragedy occurs that summer and the family struggles to make sense of it. I was struck by how well the contrasting characters of this family and small town were portrayed. There was the minister father, a rebellious mother, a… show more.

Sometimes words are little more than broken eggshell, lifeless shards from where a chick once hatched. But then there are sweet notes like this which are golden for far more reasons than the sweetness of the tune. Somewhere in this story, William Kent Krueger’s words showed me what it might be like to have the wings to fly.