![]() What they overhear and see consistently is their father’s steady compassion, even when he is broken-hearted himself. Through a furnace duct in the church basement across from their home in the rectory, the two boys eavesdrop, a clever device to reveal more of the plot than they would’ve known naturally. She is young and has a promising future as a musician ahead their mother, in deep depression briefly abandons her husband and two young sons. But when his talented, kind, attractive older sister Ariel dies mysteriously, the family feels directly the jagged edge of tragedy. ![]() ![]() His father is called when a child is killed by a train or an old war buddy becomes drunk and violent. Reconstructing the past, he sees a path weaving into and out of deep shadow.Īs the son of the town’s Methodist minister Nathan, Frank has a front row seat on small town events. Forty years later, the narrator looks back and reflects, but still doesn’t fully understand. ![]() It’s narrated by 13-year old Frank Drum, whose experiences that summer teach him “the terrible price of wisdom.” Deaths come by accident, suicide and murder, in unpredictable ways with unforeseen consequences. The prologue gives the tip-off, with the Aeschylus quote, “And even in our sleep pain… falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” What could possibly happen? Plenty, in this rich novel by William Kent Krueger. ![]()
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