Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search

“He who learns must suffer.”

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

by Leave a Comment

Ordinary Grace is a coming-of-age-novel about a thirteen year-old boy named Frank living in a small town in Minnesota in 1961. It covers the events of a summer marked by tragedy, in the form of accidents, suicide, and (possibly) murder. Frank’s father is the local minister, so he gets a front row seat to all of the heartbreak and pain in the community. Throughout the book, Frank comes face-to-face with the realities of life and death, and that terrible understanding that maybe the adults in his […]

Everybody Hates This Guy. Can We Just Pretend the Obvious Murder Was an Accident?

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

by Leave a Comment

There is a river that runs through it.  It is the (fictional) Alabaster River, and the town is Jewel, Minnesota.  It is only a decade after the end of WWII, and many men returned home significantly changed.  The town is celebrating Memorial Day when a body is discovered in the river.  The victim is Joseph Quinn, belligerent wealthy landowner and renowned drinker.  He’d been known to occasionally go down to camp overnight by the river.  Perhaps he got drunk and fell in?  Little hard to […]

Minnesota Mean

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

by Leave a Comment

When Jimmy Quinn’s body is discovered in a local river with a huge shotgun blast in his chest on Memorial Day 1958, there’s certainly no shortage of suspects. Sheriff Brody Dean is sorely tempted to write the whole thing off as a hunting accident, but fate intervenes. Local gossip soon coalesces into one persistent rumor, that Quinn’s Dakota Sioux farmhand, Noah Bluestone, is the man responsible for his death. A town pariah for both his own status as a Native American and for his interracial […]

I gave Cork O’Connor a try … turns out, I’m just not that into him

Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

by 5 Comments

William Kent Krueger seems to be very popular among many bookish folks that I generally respect. I have heard so much praise for his most recent novel, This Tender Land, and his Cork O’Connor series has been fairly positively reviewed. I imagined him to be a bit like Peter Heller, whose writing is strongly impacted by nature. A thriller with a sense of justice, and a more literary bent than, say, your average Grisham. I’ll pause here to say that there was a time in […]

“A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it.”

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger

by Leave a Comment

A librarian friend, whom I usually agree about books with, has been singing the praises of William Kent Krueger for quite a while now. Last year, based upon her recommendation I read his book The Tender Land, and didn’t much care for it. But since she has been relentless, I decided to give him another chance and read Ordinary Grace. So glad I did, as I really liked this one. The story is set in 1961 in a small town in Minnesota.  Thirteen year old Frank […]

“Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

by 2 Comments

I may be the only person on earth that didn’t like this book. I was certainly the only person in my library book club that didn’t. We went around the room giving our ratings out of five, and it was 4s and 5s all around (and one 7!) and me, with my 2. I stand by it. This book was not my jam. The first thing I’ll say in my defense was many of the people that said they loved it also said “but I […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo