It is summer, 1961 in New Bremen, Minnesota and our narrator, Frank Drum, begins by saying, “All the dying that summer began with the death of a child,” and with those simple words we are immediately drawn into that time and place “in which death in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.”
Frank, who narrates Ordinary Grace from the perspective of more than forty years later, is thirteen that pivotal summer. His father is the Methodist minister in New Bremen and his mother the choir director. His older sister is a gifted musician who is going to Juilliard and Jake, his younger brother who stutters, trails after Frank in the way younger brothers do. It should have been a summer of innocence and play, but the boys are quickly ensnared by death again when they find a body down by the train tracks not far from where their young friend had died earlier that summer.
The discovery of this body sets in motion an investigation but Frank and his brother withhold information from the police and their father and this secret becomes one more secret in a long summer of secrets. The boys know that their father carries a secret from the war and as a result of what happened became a minister. Their mother who thought she had married a lawyer, now struggles to be a minister’s wife and carries her own secrets and regrets, and Frank who sees his sister sneaking out of the house at night wonders what secrets she is keeping.
As Frank tries to maneuver through the minefield of secrets and death that summer he is guided by his younger brother, who provides him with a moral compass and by his father who although imperfect and struggling himself with the deaths that visit them imparts a powerful sense of God’s presence in the midst of their suffering. “He who learns must suffer,” his father tells Frank, quoting from the Greek playwright Aeschylus, “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.”
Krueger writes beautifully and sparingly, capturing the voice and understanding of the thirteen year old Frank as well as the older and wiser narrator Frank. The beauty of this book is in its gentle, graceful and spare sentences which brings a sense of immediacy and focus to the story. But through its spareness a sense of wonderment and awe emerges imparting a sense of hope that forgiveness and redemption do happen by the grace of God.
Brenda’s Rating: ***** (5 Stars out of 5)
Recommend this Book to: Keith, Sharon and Marian.
Book Study Worthy: YES!
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