"Ordinary Grace" is Far From Ordinary

The explanation of the title of William Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace is hidden deep within the novel.  It's slow getting there but so well worth the effort.  

This novel evokes a Minnesota summer of 1961.  The reader will be immersed in the feel of long ago days when children could stay out until dusk and a summer day never seemed to end.

"It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms.  Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder."  Frank Drum, then a young boy, tells the story of that fateful summer from his perspective forty years later.  He says "I still spend a lot of time thinking about the events of that summer.  About the terrible price of wisdom. The awful grace of God."

Beautifully written with sentences that you wish you could remember, this novel won the 2014 Edgar award.  This is one of those books that seems the less said the better.  It is almost summer now, the perfect time to start a haunting, unforgettable story about ordinary grace.