William Kent Krueger

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

A Novel

Ordinary Grace

Melissa Palmer

Book #2 Read in 2018
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

Looking back at his childhood, Frank grew up as the son of a small-town pastor. He and his younger brother Jake had adventures and grew up quickly one summer after a horrible events hits their family. This book was a mix of historical fiction, realistic fiction and a mystery. It was well written.

Fraser Simons

This flew by. Read it in one sitting. In some ways, I’ve read similar stories. The disappearance of a young girl shakes a town. But contextualized through the lens of an older man reflecting on that time, and his personal trial and examination of his brother, in particular, makes this far more of interesting than the tropes present. 

Highly relatable, too, is that every character seems raw and real and broken; lending a complexity to each that would almost certainly have rendered the ultimate conclusion of the mystery toothless and maybe even problematic, had the author not done that work throughout. 

Simple prose done very well. No stand-out specificity in the diction, but excellent, believable dialogue and reactions from characters drives the drama engine. As mentioned, highly consumable. Almost addictively consumable. Great stuff.

Ordinary Grace A Novel

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