Ordinary Grace (Krueger) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Once in a blue moon a book drops down on your desk that demands to be read. You pick it up and read the first page, and then the second, and you are hooked. Such a book is Ordinary Grace…This is a book that makes the reader feel better just by having been exposed to the delights of the story. It will stay with you for quite some time and you will always remember it with a smile.
Huffington Post


[E]legiac, evocative.... The summer of 1961 finds thirteen-year-old Frank Drum living in small-town New Bremen, Minn. He and his younger brother, Jake, idolize their older sister, Ariel.... The Drums’ peaceful existence is shattered, however, when Ariel fails to return from a late-night party. In the aftermath of her disappearance...dark secrets about New Bremen come to light....for what becomes a resonant tale of fury, guilt, and redemption.
Publishers Weekly


For fans of Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home or Krueger’s other works, this is a touching read, with just enough intrigue to keep the story moving along. —Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH
Library Journal


A thoughtful literary mystery that is wholly compelling and will appeal to fans of Dennis Lehane and Tom Franklin.... Don’t take the title too literally, for Krueger has produced something that is anything but ordinary.
BookPage


One cannot read Ordinary Grace without feeling as if it is destined to be hailed as a classic work of literature. Ordinary Grace is one of those very rare books in which one regrets reaching its end, knowing that the experience of having read it for the first time will never be repeated. Krueger, who is incapable of writing badly, arguably has given us his masterpiece.
Bookreporter.com


(Starred review.) A respected mystery writer turns his attention to the biggest mystery of all: God....  Krueger aims higher and hits harder with a stand-alone novel that shares much with his other work.... [A] series of...deaths shake the world of Frank Drum, the 13-year-old narrator.... One of the novel's pivotal mysteries concerns the gaps among what Frank experiences (as a participant and an eavesdropper), what he knows and what he thinks he knows.... Yet, ultimately, the world of this novel is one of redemptive grace and mercy, as well as unidentified corpses and unexplainable tragedy. A novel that transforms narrator and reader alike.
Kirkus Reviews