Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger *****

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger is the story of two families in rural Minnesota in the summer of 1961 when five people died (as remembered by 13-year-old Frank Drum forty years later.) Frank’s father is a Methodist minister, and the other family, the Brandts, is the richest in town. It was a summer of death. ”Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.” There is a murder mystery, but the beauty of the novel is the characters-damaged, flawed, and seeking grace. With so much pain and death, no villain emerges.

A poignant tale of people struggling to make peace with God and themselves-some successful, some not.

The towns (New Bremen, Cadbury, Fosburg) were in the Minnesota River valley outside of Mankato.

Some minor spoilers follow:

The Drum family

Frank: Young teenager. Narrator forty years in the future.

Jake: Frank’s younger brother. Stutters.

Ariel: Sister. New high school graduated. Accepted to Juilliard for the fall. Born with a cleft lip.

Nathan: Frank’s father. Was going to be a lawyer, until WWII. He became a Methodist minister. (We don’t know what happened in the war.)

Ruth: Frank’s mother.

Lloyd and Liz: Ruth’s father and stepmother.

 

The Brandt family

Karl: Future heir to a brewery fortune. Ariel’s boyfriend. Drives a red Triumph TR3.

Axel and Julia: Karl’s parents. She is his wife, arrogant, fortune seeker from a poor family

Emil: Famous musician. Came back from WWII with his face disfigured and blind. Formerly engaged to Ruth. Ariel’s music teacher. Ariel is transcribing his memoir.

Lise: Emil’s deaf sister. Doesn’t like to be touched. (We never find out why.)

 

Five deaths

Accident: Bobby Cole: Run over by a train (We never find out if this is an accident or not.)

Nature: The itinerant: Found dead by the river (We never find out the circumstances.)

Murder: Ariel Drum.

Suicide: Karl Brandt.

Morris Engdahl: Bully. Having sex with underage Judy Kleinschmidt.

Other characters:

Doyle: Suspicious police officer.

Gus: Was in the war with Nathan Drum. Calls him Captain.

Danny O’Keefe: Frank’s native American friend.

Warren Redstone: Danny’s great uncle.

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Born a Crime by Trevor Noah ****

People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” In, Born a Crime, Trevor Noah’s memoir of growing up in South Africa, he writes about apartheid, racism, language, crime, segregation, and education. The book ends before he leaves South Africa, so this is not a rags-to-riches story, but one of survival. His insights are delivered with a light touch -- a mixture of harsh reality, universal truth, and humor.

This book indirectly says much about contemporary racism. Highly recommended.

LANGUAGE

“That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”

Nelson Mandela once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, “I understand that you have a culture and identity.”

[My mother] believed my prayers were more powerful because I prayed in English. Everyone knows that Jesus, who’s white, speaks English. The Bible is in English. Yes, the Bible … came to South Africa in English so to us it’s in English. Which made my prayers the best prayers because English prayers get answered first.

BLACKS ACCEPTED RACISM: “Oh, Nombuyiselo,” she said. “Trevor is so naughty. He’s the naughtiest child I’ve ever come across in my life.” “Then you should hit him.” “I can’t hit him.” “Why not?” “Because I don’t know how to hit a white child,” she said. “A black child, I understand. A black child, you hit them, and they stay black. Trevor, when you hit him, he turns blue and green and yellow and red. I’ve never seen those colors before. I’m scared I’m going to break him. I don’t want to kill a white person. I’m so afraid. I’m not going to touch him.” And she never did. My grandmother treated me like I was white.

BRITISH RACISM VS AFRIKANERS RACISM: The difference between British racism and Afrikaner racism was that at least the British gave the natives something to aspire to. If they could learn to speak correct English and dress in proper clothes, if they could Anglicize and civilize themselves, one day they might be welcome in society. The Afrikaners never gave us that option. British racism said, “If the monkey can walk like a man and talk like a man, then perhaps he is a man.” Afrikaner racism said, “Why give a book to a monkey?”

FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS: We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited.

WHY TEENS TURN TO CRIME: The hood made me realize that crime succeeds because crime does the one thing the government doesn’t do: crime cares. Crime is grassroots. Crime looks for the young kids who need support and a lifting hand. Crime offers internship programs and summer jobs and opportunities for advancement. Crime gets involved in the community. Crime doesn’t discriminate.

WARNING: When you get to the page that says, “All cats are witches,” (page 93 in my book) skip the rest of that section. It features horrific animal abuse and adds little to the story. Similarly, Chapter 18: My Mother’s Life can be skipped. It revisits the story already told with an emphasis on alcoholism and domestic violence.

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The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware *****

In TheWoman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, Laura Blacklock is thirty-two years old, and nothing is going right. She’s breaking up with her boyfriend and hasn’t received the promotion she’s been promised for years. To make matters worse, someone broke into her apartment, gave her a black eye, and stole her purse. And everything is downhill from there. The thing I loved about her is she never gives up. I was rooting for her the entire time.

A mystery with one surprise after another. Couldn’t put it down!

Laura is a travel writer at Velocity, but she never receives the perks, the complimentary trips to exotic locations. This is her big break. Her boss is on maternity leave and she is given the invitation for the maiden voyage of an ultra-luxury cruise ship—only ten cabins. The owner Richard Bullmer is the man in charge. His reclusive, dying of cancer wife Anne is the power behind the throne. It is her fortune that finances everything. Other guests are famous photographer Cole Lederer, and her ex-boyfriend Ben Howard. This voyage should be Ms. Blacklock’s career-making opportunity to make contacts and impress people that make a difference. Unfortunately, nothing goes right for Laura.

Early in the trip, Laura hears a splash and sees blood in cabin 10. Someone has been thrown overboard. She reports this, but no one is missing. Cabin 10 is unoccupied, even though Laura saw someone there and even borrowed a mascara from her. Against all contrary evidence, Laura trusts herself and tries to identify the missing girl and discover what happened. She never doubts herself or gives up.

Every time she thinks she had solved the mystery, something else is revealed.

Even though the book is categorized as a psychological thriller, I read it as a straight mystery.

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Red Velvet Cupcake Murder by Joanne Fluke ****

Red Velvet Cupcake Murder by Joanne Fluke is a cross between Midsomer Murders and a cookbook. The mystery has a high body count and greedy heirs. Interspersed with the mystery are sixteen annotated recipes with introductory dialogue. I skipped the recipes (one fifth of the pages) but found the mysteries engaging.

A pleasant diversion and an easy read.

The protagonist is Hannah Swensen. She owns the Cookie Jar bakery in Lake Eden Minnesota. Anything that happens is a reason to bake cookies. A crane is in town to raise a huge dome to cover a rooftop garden and her friend Barbara Donnelly is in the hospital after falling from that same building. Both occasions call for cookies with histories and recipes. Sometimes it is not cookies. Hannah also makes pies, muffins, and pancakes.

Hannah has two sisters, a Mother Dolores, a partner Lisa, and two boyfriends Norman and Mike. Her 23-pound orange and white cat is Moishe.

The victims:

“Clayton Wallace, the band bus driver for the Cinnamon Roll Six, had been the first fatality in the multi-car pileup on the interstate two months ago.” The Minneapolis PD declared this a suicide, but Hannah doesn’t think so.

Barbara Donnelly fell off the top of a fancy condo conversion that was a hotel. She survives but has memory and cognitive issues. She thinks monsters are after her in her hospital room and that her brother is trying to kill her. She doesn’t have a brother.

Dr. Bev drives her new Maserati into the river. Hannah finds her but is not able to resuscitate her with CPR. Many people dislike Dr. Bev, including Hannah. When the autopsy reveals the remains of a Red Velvet Cupcake in her stomach along with the drug that killed her, Hannah is the prime suspect.

Warren Dalworth, with terminal cancer and memory issues, has changed his lawyer and his will.

 

Squirm by Carl Hiaasen *****

Squirm by Carl Hiaasen is a zany romp for the younger set. The author is well known (or should be) for Florida-based comedies with crazy characters. Squirm is the fifth book in a series for children. The hero (whatever) is Billy Dickens who collects snakes (all releases them). His father (possibly a government spy) left years ago, but this summer Billy is going to find him. Antics include cougars, grizzly bears, and eagles. His mother LOVES eagles.

Highly recommended for middle graders.

Billy’s mother loves eagles so much that each time something happens to the local eagle nest, she locates a new nest and moves to be near it. Eagles mate for life. 

Billy’s father disappears regularly. No one knows what he does, except that it has something to do with drones.

His father's new wife is Little Thunder-Sky (call me Lil) and her daughter is Summer Chasing-Hawks. They are part of the Crow Nation (“Aren’t the Crows the one who mailed General Custer?” “Nope. Our tribe was on the other end of that deal.”)

The baddies range from school bullies to a rich trophy hunter/poacher. 

A fun read. From Accelerated Reader: Middle grades interest level. Book level 4.9. AR points 9.0.

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The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow ***

The Dawn of Everything overturns everything you’ve learned about the agricultural revolution, the evolution of cities, and the rise of Western civilization. Everything. The authors aspire to be compared to Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond. If you haven’t read Diamond’s book, drop everything, and read it now. It is extraordinary. In comparison, The Dawn of Everything is a disappointment.

At 525 pages with an additional 175 pages of notes, bibliography, and index, this book screams for an editor. The writing is simultaneously dense and rambling. Nothing was left out or abridged. Much was repeated. It reads like a dissertation. The ideas are rewarding, but the reading is a slog.

For example, the authors make a case that the European Enlightenment (the inspiration for the French and American Revolutions) can trace its roots to Native American philosophers. “But as we have seen, indigenous North American ideas – from the advocacy of individual liberties to skepticism of revealed religion – certainly had an impact on the European Enlightenment, even though, like pipe-smoking, such ideas underwent many transformations in the process. No doubt it would be too much to suggest that the Enlightenment itself had its first stirrings in seventeenth-century North America. But it’s possible, perhaps, to imagine some future non-Eurocentric history where such a suggestion would not be treated as almost by definition outrageous and absurd.”

Fascinating, thought-provoking, but difficult to read. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel first.

 The “three elementary principles of domination – control of violence (or sovereignty), control of knowledge, and charismatic politics.”

“Over the course of this book we have had occasion to refer to the three primordial freedoms, those which for most of human history were simply assumed: the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey and the freedom to create or transform social relationships. We also noted how the English word ‘free’ ultimately derives from a Germanic term meaning ‘friend’ – since, unlike free people, slaves cannot have friends.”

Our legal framework is based on Roman slave law. “Our very word ‘family’ shares a root with the Latin famulus, meaning ‘house slave’, via familia, which originally referred to everyone under the domestic authority of a single paterfamilias or male head of household. Domus, the Latin word for ‘household’, in turn gives us not only ‘domestic’ and ‘domesticated’ but dominium, which was the technical term for the emperor’s sovereignty as well as a citizen’s power over private property. Through that we arrive at (literally, ‘familiar’) notions of what it means to be ‘dominant’, to possess ‘dominion’ and to ‘dominate’.”

With examples from around the world (China, India, the Americas, Europe, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Africa), the authors give examples of cases where cities developed without agriculture, writing, metallurgy, bureaucracy, or centralized decision making. The evolution from hunter-gathers to farmers to cities to states is shown to be a European imperialist myth.

“Feminist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock’s [suggests] that most members of what are called egalitarian societies seem less interested in equality per se than what she calls ‘autonomy’. What matters to Montagnais-Naskapi women, for instance, is not so much whether men and women are seen to be of equal status but whether women are, individually or collectively, able to live their lives and make their own decisions without male interference.”

My 2c. Homo sapiens evolved about a quarter-million years ago. The historical/anthropological record extends back about 10,000 years. There is no reason to expect those people to be significantly (intelligence, curiosity, desires, relationships) different from people living today. Any theory that suggests that they are naïve, child-like, or primitive is bound to be wrong.

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