Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

All the dying that summer began with the death of a child, a boy with golden hair and thick glasses, killed on the railroad tracks outside New Bremen, Minnesota, sliced into pieces by a thousand tons of steel speeding across the prairie toward South Dakota.

Another prologie (disposable characters in prologues) bites the dust and in the standard ghastly manner. Yet there is the foreshadowing of bigger problems and more death to come and I don't know about you, but my curiosity is swelling.

Paragraph 2 reminds us again:

It was the summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.

Sounds like it's time to get out of Minnesota! The prologue is over before you realize it- it's short at one page.

Chapter 1:

Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor.

What follows is some uninteresting exposition about bugs, hot weather, 1961, more heat, fans and a brother.

First thing said:

"Yes?"

Why can't the first thing that's said in books nowadays mean something rather than be one-syllable words? Nevertheless, this gets 2.5 stars based on the promises made in the prologue.

Verdict: Pass (barely)

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht