Frank narrates from the point of view of what it was like for his thirteen-year-old self and how all of that loss affected him and his brother during that memorable, hot summer. Three more deaths occur soon after, with one of them clearly a murder. That kicks off a life-changing summer for Frank, filled with loss, confusion, and adult topics he'd been shielded from until now.
It's widely assumed to be a terrible accident, but Frank overhears some adults saying it could have been something else.
The first happens even before the novel opens: a boy named Bobby, about the same age as he and Jake, was killed by a train. As he explains early in the novel, four deaths occurred in town that summer. Frank narrates this story as an adult, looking back on the summer of 1961, which changed him forever. Their father is the Methodist minister in their town and two other neighboring towns. Thirteen-year-old Frank lives in southern Minnesota in a small town with his parents, older sister, Ariel, and younger brother, Jake. Like the previous novel, this one did not disappoint, with historical fiction wrapped around a moving coming-of-age story, with a hefty dose of nature and a mystery at its center. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2014. So, my book group chose another Krueger novel, Ordinary Grace, for our March book this year. We all loved it-a rarity for us to all agree on a book!-and it was my #2 book of the year for 2022. Last spring, our All County Reads book was This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, so my neighborhood book group got free copies from the library.
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