A good book is like an amusement park ride.

It should strap you in, take you for a ride, turn you upside down, shake you, and return you to where you started, changed a little. Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger is a book like that.

The story is set in the town of New Bremen, Minnesota in the summer of 1961. The narrator, Frank Drum, is thirteen, his brother Jake is ten. Together, they must face a horrific summer of loss, and watch both the relationship of their parents and the faith of their father, a Methodist minister, strained.

At one point, Frank says this about his father in the face of a horrible tragedy,

"Like the others they were curious, I'm sure, what this suffering man could possible say that was good about God."

and this about his mother,

"When my mother sang I almost believed in heaven. It wasn't just that she had a beautiful voice but also that she had a way of delivering a piece that pierced your heart. Oh when she sang she could make a fence post cry. When she sang she could make people laugh or dance or fall in love or go to war."

This book reminded me of a Midwestern version of a favorite of mine, Boys Life, by Robert McCammon, which is set in Alabama. The prose in Ordinary Grace was not as rich, but it was still an enjoyable read and well-worth the time.

Every book has at least one quote that speaks to me, I believe in Ordinary Grace that this was it:

"I didn't know what he was thinking but I was thinking that I wanted desperately to be someone better than I was."

This book was a good companion and gave me a little to consider.

C. H. Lawler is the author of three novels, The Saints of Lost Things, The Memory of Time, and Living Among the Dead.