Let’s look back to a simpler time, when kids played outside until dark and phones were attached to the walls. Have you seen the movie Secretariat where the father says to his sons, “Get your devices off the table,?” The devices were their toy airplanes, that always cracks me up but it also is a reminder of how much things have changed. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger reminds us of a less hurried time. He wrote from his hear masterfully weaving together a novel of historical fiction, matters of grief, coming of age (bildungsroman), and mystery.

The story is told from Frank Drum’s viewpoint as he, now a grown man, looks back to the summer when he was an unsettled kid of thirteen grappling with what manhood was all about in his mixed-up world. His younger brother, Jake, has a stuttering problem. He also has deep insight. He didn’t fake things, he was the real deal. Ariel, their talented older sister, was soon to be on her way to Juliard. Their father, Nathan Drum, pastors 3 churches, ministers to his war buddy,Gus, and pours into the whole community. “My father and his great embracing heart.”

On the other end of the caring spectrum we meet Ruth Drum, distant mom and wife, being a preacher’s wife is not what she signed up for.

Kruegar shows the after effects of WWII. “I think that it wasn’t so much the war as what we took into the war. Whatever cracks were already there the war forced apart, and what we might otherwise have kept inside came spilling out.”

The novel starts with an accidental death of a small boy then the boys find a homeless man who died of natural causes. Next, there’s a suicide attempt and a murder! Not a book for youngsters, the content is heavy and the language is like that of sailors, but for readers that are ready it is a gift. We are shown the different ways people work through grief.

“Hope was what my father held to. My mother chose despair.”

“I (Frank)felt ______’s death had shoved me through a doorway into a world where I was a stranger.”

Jake said, “If we put everything in Gods’ hands, maybe we won't have to be afraid anymore.”

Please join Kate and Sheila as they dive into the 1960s. Blessings to you, dear readers!