236, when “Jake flopped on the sofa and turned on the TV.” Unless he could reach the TV from the sofa, Jake would have had to turn it on before flopping, as remotes weren’t around until the 1970s.)

I was twelve in 1961, and the details and settings rang true. I also admired Krueger’s capture of the time period. The summer remembered in the story is one of death and mystery, and the motivation of the boys to find out what is going on is plausibly and cleverly crafted. What I liked about ORDINARY GRACE was the way Frank and his younger brother Jake constantly eavesdropped on the adult conversations in their world-a Minnesota small town in 1961. Until, in our own despair, against our will,Ĭomes wisdom through the awful grace of God.** According to Goodreads, Aeschylus wrote:Įven in our sleep, pain which cannot forget I read the second sentence several times, thinking there had to be a comma missing between the words, “sleep” and “pain,” wondered what “sleep pain” could be, but didn’t google Aeschylus (whom I know practically nothing about) until later, when the quote, punctuated the same way, came up again toward the end of the novel. 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.

The narrator, Frank Drum, tells us that his father (who we soon learn was a Methodist minister) often quoted the Greek playwright Aeschylus: William Kent Krueger, author of ORDINARY GRACE, gives us a line by Blaise Pascal,* then takes literary reference a step further, launching the novel with a Prologue written in the voice of the story’s narrator-a grown man recalling events from the summer he was thirteen. Many authors follow the dedication page with a quote (or quotes) from famous writers or thinkers. I open the front, flip to the copyright page, find the publication date, glance at the dedication. I study the back cover copy, the author’s head shot, the biographical note. When I pluck a title from my stack of purchased-but-not-yet-read books (mostly fiction, generally soft-cover), I begin by examining the book itself.

An ordinary grace book review