70 pages • 2 hours read
William Kent KruegerOrdinary Grace
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary
Later that evening, Ruth Drum says she’s going for a walk around the block. She stays gone for a long time and the family is worried. Jake says he saw Ruth “walking along the railroad tracks headed toward the trestle outside of town” (221). Frank and Jake take flashlights and go and try to find her. Frank and Jake attempt to reassure each other that their mother is fine, with Frank saying, “In this way we reassured ourselves because Ariel’s death had shattered any sense of normality, any firm sense that what any future moment held was predictable” (222).
The boys find their mother standing on the same trestle where so many of the book’s other encounters have taken place. Frank sends Jake back to the house, to tell the adults where they are. Frank and his mother talk, with Ruth asking if the trestle is the spot where Frank first saw Ariel’s corpse. Franks confirms that it is. Frank admits that Ruth’s behavior has been scaring him lately; Ruth, looking out at the river while talking, says that she can’t talk to Nathan, her husband, anymore because he makes her too angry. She goes on to say that she believes that “‘there is no God. I could jump right now into that river and there would be no divine hand reaching out to save me. It would simply be the end’” (224). When Frank says that it would not be the end for Frank, his brother, and his father, Ruth adds, “‘[m]y point exactly. There is no God to care about us. We’ve got only ourselves and each other’” (224).
Nathan and others arrive at the trestle, and the scene ends with Ruth asking Frank to do something he “can’t tell [his] father about” (224). This act turns out to be Frank bicycling to the Brandt estate in the dead of night in order to leave a note on the windshield of Karl Brandt’s red sports car. Upon arriving at the Brandt property, Frank sees “in the bright moonlight that a word had been spray-painted in black on of the [estate’s] pillars: Murdrer” (225). Frank is angry at the misspelling and notices a can of spray-paint on the ground. Frank climbs a tree to get on to the property, leaves the note, then scales the fence and bikes toward home. Shortly after, he encounters Officer Doyle’s squad car. Doyle orders Frank off his bike and puts it in the trunk of the cruiser. The two drive back to the Brandt estate, where Doyle shines his car’s lights on the graffiti, then gets out and picks up the spray-paint can.
Frank assumes he’s going to be jailed, but Doyle instead takes him home, saying, “‘A lot of folks around here, they think the Brandts are kind of big for their britches’” (226). Doyle says that he’s going to hold on to the can of spray paint and “‘[d]ump it somewhere nobody’ll find it’” (227). He makes Frank swear not to tell anyone, then lets Frank out of the vehicle, once they’re at the Drum residence.
Chapter 29 Summary
The next morning, the sheriff arrives to inform the Drum family about the vandalism at the Brandt estate: “‘Somebody spray-painted those folks’ front gate. Wrote Murderer there. Except the vandal wasn’t too bright. Left out an e and spelled it Murdrer’” (228). The sheriff asks about Ruth’s well-being, following her late-night walk to the trestle, then give Frank a condemning look, in regard to the vandalism. Jake, too, assumes that Frank is the culprit, and tells him as much after the sheriff has left. Frank reveals to Jake that their mother had asked Frank to leave the note on Karl’s windshield. When pressed, Frank says he has no idea what the note details. As Frank recounts this, Karl arrives to the Drum house in his sports car.
Karl tells the Drum family that he didn’t kill Ariel, and that indeed he couldn’t ever so much as hurt her. Nathan tells Karl that he didn’t believe Karl was capable of such an act. Karl says that the whole town “‘stares at [him] like he’s a monster’” (230).
Karl’s parents, Axel and Julia, arrive to the Drum house. Upon Karl telling his parents that he had to inform the Drums that he is not the killer, Julia Brandt responds that he owes no explanation to anyone. Ruth disagrees. The Brandts send Karl home and stay to talk to Nathan and Ruth. They, too, say that Karl neither killed nor impregnated Ariel. Julia says that Ariel got herself pregnant through other means in order to force a marriage to Karl, and thereby marry in to wealth.
Ruth goes on to insult the Drum children: “‘Just look at your children, Ruth. A girl with a harelip. A son with a stutter. Another son as wild as an Indian. What kind of children would Ariel have produced?’” (232). Ruth’s retorts:
…I remember when you [Julia] were the daughter of a drunkard who fixed other people’s automobiles. And everyone in this town knew you had your eye on Axel, and we’ve all done the calculations regarding your marriage and the birth of your son so don’t you say one more word to me about Ariel’s condition, you of all people(232).
The Brandts exit and Nathan tries to calm Ruth. Ruth says that if Nathan brings up God one more time, she will walk out on him. The chapter closes with Ruth phoning her father and asking if she can stay with him and Liz for a while.
Chapter 30 Summary
Ruth goes to stay with her father and Liz. Nathan hides out in his church office. Frank and Jake find Gus at the barbershop. After lunch at home, Gus takes Frank and Jake on his motorcycle and the three leave town limits and reach a ranch, where they go horseback riding. The ranch is run by a woman named Ginger French, who Gus has a romantic relationship with. At the Drum house, Gus makes dinner. He brings two beers from the fridge and Nathan, out of accordance with both character and title, takes one of the beers.
Chapter 31 Summary
Karl Brandt returns to the Drum house after dinner, while Frank and Jake are washing dishes. He asks where Nathan is, and the boys tell him he’s across the street, at the church. Karl goes to find him and Frank and Jake follow, going to the church basement and listening to Karl and Nathan’s conversation through the furnace air duct.
Karl tells Nathan that he and Ariel ‘‘were friends but not in that way” (242), then goes to tell Nathan that he (Karl) is gay, calling himself “a faggot” and “a sick freak” (243). Nathan responds by calling Karl “a child of God” (243), and says again that he doesn’t think that Karl has killed Ariel. Nathan asks if others are aware of his sexual orientation; Karl says that he’s told no one, including Ariel, though he believes that Ariel figured it out. Karl goes on to say that he had talked to Ariel about getting an abortion, and that she refused. Karl concludes his conversation with Nathan by saying he doesn’t know who Ariel went to see, late at night.
Officer Doyle arrives to the church basement as the conversation concludes, looking for Gus. Doyle is aware the boys have been eavesdropping on the conversation and asks about pertinent details. Doyle presses Jake hard, and Jake says that, “He’s not a m-m-m-murderer. He’s just a f-f-faggot, wh-wh-whatever that is” (245). Doyle’s eyes grow big and the officer demands that Jake tell him everything.
The chapter concludes with Frank and Jake discussing Karl’s sexuality. Frank tells Jake not to use the word faggot; Jake says he feels like a freak because of his speech impediment, and asks his brother if he is indeed a freak, and if Karl is. Franks says neither Jake nor Karl are freaks, and tells Jake that he believes Karl is telling the truth about not killing Ariel.
Chapter 32 Summary
It’s Friday, and the day of visitation, prior to Ariel’s funeral. Frank and Jake go to the barbershop, to get haircuts for the funeral. There, they overhear men they don’t know discussing Karl’s sexuality—word has gotten out, and it’s made clear that Doyle is the person who is spreading the gossip. The boys leave without getting their hair cut.
The two boys find Gus in the large cemetery where Ariel is to be buried. They tell Gus that they were eavesdropping on the conversation between Karl and Nathan. Gus says that they need to tell Nathan the truth, and that he (Gus) will deal with Doyle. Frank and Jake then head to their grandfather and Liz’s house, to look for their dad, but he’s not there. They walk back to the Flats and find Nathan in his church office. They admit to spying on their father’s conversation with Karl then tell him about Doyle, which concerns Nathan. Later, Frank gets a call that Gus is in jail for beating up Officer Doyle. Frank vows to “spring him” (253).
Chapter 33 Summary
Frank and Jake head to the town jail. Doyle and another officer, Officer Blake, are there. Frank works to convince the officers to let Gus go, saying that he is the only person who can properly dig Ariel’s grave. The ploy works, and Gus goes free. Gus promises to “‘give Ariel a grand grave’” (257). Nathan finds the boys walking home and tells them to get in his car. At home, the Drum family prepares for Ariel’s visitation.
At the visitation, Frank and Jake discuss their dreams and nightmares, with Jake seeing he sees both Ariel and Redstone in his dreams, while Frank only sees Redstone. Jake gives more details, saying that in his dream, Ariel is playing the piano in a large ballroom and Redstone is dancing.
In the middle of the night, Frank wakes to the phone ringing. Nathan answers and the sheriff informs him that Karl Brandt is dead.
Chapters 28-33 Analysis
These chapters provide much in the way of offering a sociological lens with which to analyze the New Bremen community. The misspelling of the word Murderer, in addition to being a wry way of Krueger saying without saying that Karl is not the killer, shines light on the undercurrent of class warfare common to many communities. Such class conflict is further reinforced by Officer Doyle letting Frank off the hook, when Doyle believes that it’s Frank who has committed the act of vandalism. One might also view the misspelling of the spray-painted word as commentary on the educational background of New Bremen in general: just as the vandal has literally misspelled the word, showing a lack of education, the town is also a rumor mill, and accuses an innocent young adult of a heinous crime.
While the Brandts would seem to be something along the lines of secularly Christian—they deem themselves followers but arrive as far from devout—both their affluence and their detachment from the church community isolate them, making them easy targets for New Bremen’s xenophobic moral majority.
Traditional Christian morality is again on display when Karl comes out to Nathan, in the church office. While Nathan, in that moment, is inclusionary, saying that Karl remains a “child of God” despite his sexual orientation, it’s clear that Karl thinks otherwise, labeling himself, because of his homosexuality, a “sick freak” and a “monster.” Through his death, we see another demographic that has no future in the small towns of the Midwest: the LGBTQ community. This idea is reinforced by Officer Doyle, who is all too eager to spread word of Karl’s sexuality. Additionally, the conversation that Frank and Jake overhear in the barbershop clearly communicates that the average New Bremen hetero male is stereotypically homophobic.
We also learn that Julia Brandt comes from the common stock that populates the Flats, and has indeed married into money, something that Julia herself in turn accuses Ariel of trying to do with Karl. Through this collection of moments, Krueger offers us the uglier side of small-town life: communities set in their beliefs and ways so thoroughly that anyone other is vilified and effectively cast out. It’s worth noting, too, that Jake compares his own speech impediment to Karl’s homosexuality: while clearly neither are freakish, ten-year-old Jake asks Frank if he, Jake, is indeed a freak for having a stutter, and if Karl is a freak for being gay. While Frank answers no to both—a sentiment that all the Drums echo—it seems clear that many in the New Bremen community think differently, and that any kind of otherness, be it race (Redstone), being a nonconformist (Engdahl), being gay (Karl) or being differently-abled in one way or another (Bobby Cole, Jake, Emil Brandt, Lise Brandt) occlude those individuals from having a successful future in New Bremen.
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