Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger - Review by Angela Harvey Williams
The prologue of William Kent Krueger’s novel warns that there is going to be a lot of death in the story, in all its forms – death by natural causes, accidental death, suicide and murder. The reader is also reminded of Aeschylus’s quote that knowledge and wisdom come through pain and “the awful grace” of God. One gets the impression that this is going to be a challenging read, but nothing could be further from the truth. The quality of the writing, the evocative sense of time and place, and the beautiful characterisations make this a novel to savour.
The story is told by Frank Drum, a 40-year old man looking back to the summer of 1961 when he was 13, to events that he now realises shaped his life and the lives of those around him. The setting is a small town, New Bremen, in Minnesota, where the young Frank lives with his family: Nathan, his father, is a Methodist minister; Ruth, his mother, is a talented pianist and singer; his sister Ariel has inherited her mother’s talents; and Jake, his younger brother, is Frank’s companion in his scrapes and adventures. The main characters are not two dimensional, they are well-rounded and lovingly portrayed by Krueger. Nathan is a man damaged by his war experiences; Ruth is disappointed with the life she has ended up with and tends to live vicariously through her daughter; Jake’s stammer means that he is bullied at school and socially isolated; Ariel seems a little too good to be true, but she also has her secrets and her obstinacies. Apart from the family members, there is a cast of supporting characters who are also well written and convincing, making this a story in which the reader feels very much involved and invested. The evocation of small town America in the early 1960s feels authentic, when watching a fuzzy black and white television seemed like the height of sophistication, when children could roam the streets in safety, and when riding around in a classic car was just an everyday experience.
To some extent this is a whodunnit, so I do not want to give too much away about the plot. Suffice it to say that I did not manage to work out who had ‘dunnit’, so it works well just on that level. More importantly, it is a brilliant coming-of-age novel as the young Frank tries to make sense of the events of that summer, some of which he only really understands as an older man. “Ordinary Grace” has been compared to “To Kill a Mockingbird” and I think there are similarities, but this novel is no pastiche. It is a beautifully written work that stands very much in its own right. It made me laugh and cry; and it made me want to read more of William Kent Krueger’s work. This novel is a class act – read it!