It so happens I’ve been reading William Kent Krueger’s much-acclaimed 2013 novel Ordinary Grace.
The story is about two brothers growing up in small-town Minnesota in 1961.
Bremen, Minn., is the kind of small town I grew up in myself in Texas (I turned 11 in 1961), a town where everybody knows everybody and open secrets are as common as closely guarded secrets.
Thirteen-year-old Frank Drum and his stuttering little brother are the sons of the Methodist preacher. He was a captain in World War II and gives free lodging to a war buddy who lives in the church basement when he’s not drinking with other vets who are haunted, to varying degrees, by memories of war.
The boys’ mom is a bit of a rebellious preacher’s wife–the preacher man was a law-school student when they married–who smokes and drinks but does make beautiful music with the couple’s talented daughter at the church on Sundays.
In a short time, all hell breaks out in this peaceful riverside hamlet as a series of tragic and mysterious deaths occur.
Against this backdrop of mystery and suspense, young Frank Drum and his little brother are big time eavesdroppers who learn that their father did something in the war that resulted in a lot of soldiers getting killed.
This is a smart and eloquent novel by one of our best mystery writers; it’s been compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, Stand By Me and other great coming of age stories.
I’m halfway through it, but I can tell you it has a superb plot and subplots that, as the book’s blurb says, raise all kinds of moral questions: What secrets will destroy us? How do we deal with grief? And what solace is there in the ordinary grace of the world?
Among other things, it’s a powerful reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that ordinary Americans made for our freedoms in wars that haunt the warriors and their loved ones long after wars cease.
Order or learn more about Ordinary Grace here at Amazon.
“Youth Rising,” at the American Cemetery in Normandy.
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