Set during the searing summer of 1961 in the small Minnesota town of New Bremen, Ordinary Grace follows the Drum family as a series of deaths upends their lives and rattles the community. Through memory and mystery, the novel charts how loss reshapes faith, love, and identity—and how grace can arrive in the plainest moments. At the center stands a boy narrator watching childhood fall away as the adult world reveals its shadows.
Main Characters
Frank Drum
Frank Drum is the thirteen-year-old narrator, recalling the summer that shattered his innocence from the vantage of adulthood. Curious, impulsive, and fiercely protective of his younger brother, he pushes into danger and discovery, drawn to secrets he barely understands. His love for his sister and his complicated respect for his parents anchor him as he confronts prejudice, hypocrisy, and death. Frank’s journey is a classic coming-of-age arc: he learns that truth is rarely tidy, that forgiveness costs, and that the “ordinary” moments of mercy can be the most profound.
Jake Drum
Jake Drum, eleven, is Frank’s steadfast shadow and the story’s quiet moral center. His stutter flares under stress but vanishes when conviction takes hold, revealing a steady compassion and innate spiritual clarity. Jake forms a rare, gentle bond with Lise and often perceives what others miss, including the pain festering behind small-town politeness. His arc culminates in a simple prayer—an “ordinary grace”—that begins mending his family’s brokenness and helps him, at last, find his voice.
Ariel Drum
Ariel Drum, eighteen, is the family’s brilliant “golden child,” a gifted musician whose mysterious death drives the novel’s central investigation. Admired by New Bremen, she also carries private burdens and adult decisions that complicate her perfection. Her ties to Karl and her mentorship under Emil conceal deeper truths, including love, fear, and a future she longs to control. As her secrets surface, Ariel’s image resolves into a tragic, richly human portrait, forcing everyone to confront uncomfortable truths and lies.
Nathan Drum
Nathan Drum is the town’s Methodist minister and the Drum patriarch, a thoughtful, stoic man whose faith is tested by accumulating loss. Scarred by wartime trauma, he prizes compassion and quiet steadiness over fiery preaching, caring for a grieving community even as his own family fractures. His marriage to Ruth strains under grief and old resentments, though his friendship with Gus reveals a loyalty forged in battle. Nathan’s story is an intimate study of faith and doubt: he finds strength not in certainty, but in love, humility, and the courage to admit what he cannot understand.
Ruth Drum
Ruth Drum is the artistic, passionate matriarch whose once-bright ambitions feel stifled by the expectations of a minister’s wife. She pours her hopes into Ariel and resents Nathan’s calling, a hurt that deepens into fury and despair after her daughter’s death. Ruth’s enduring bond with Emil embodies the life she might have chosen, and it complicates her already fragile marriage. Her arc is a raw portrait of death and grief: she retreats, lashes out, and only slowly, haltingly, finds a path back toward love—and toward grace.
Supporting Characters
Gus
Gus is Nathan’s war buddy and the church’s rough-edged guardian, a hard-drinking outsider with a fierce sense of justice. He looks out for Frank and Jake, offering blunt wisdom and protection their father cannot always provide. Initially a point of contention in the Drum household, he ultimately proves indispensable, revealing a battered but unshakable loyalty.
Emil Brandt
Emil Brandt is a reclusive, brilliant composer, blinded and disfigured in the war, whose mentorship of Ariel binds the Brandt and Drum families. His caustic wit masks deep wounds and an isolation sharpened by genius and trauma. As the investigation unfolds, Emil’s choices and past connections—especially with Ruth and Lise—become pivotal to understanding the tragedy.
Lise Brandt
Lise Brandt is Emil’s deaf sister, intensely devoted to him and to the fragile order of their secluded life. Misread by the town as “simple,” she communicates through routine, silence, and sudden storms of emotion, yet opens herself to Jake’s gentle presence. Her possessive love and isolation lead to a devastating act that reframes the summer’s events.
Karl Brandt
Karl Brandt, Ariel’s admired boyfriend, stands at the crossroads of privilege and pressure as the heir to New Bremen’s most prominent family. Beneath his polished exterior, he wrestles with a hidden identity that turns his courtship of Ariel into a painful performance. Suspected in her death and squeezed by gossip and expectation, he becomes a tragic emblem of the town’s judgment.
Warren Redstone
Warren Redstone is a Dakota Sioux drifter and Danny O’Keefe’s great-uncle, whose possession of Ariel’s locket makes him a convenient suspect. Proud and world-weary, he voices hard truths about history and prejudice that the town would rather ignore. Frank’s choice to let him escape becomes a defining moral test, underscoring Redstone’s role as scapegoat rather than culprit.
Minor Characters
- Officer Doyle: A brutish, gossiping cop who bullies Jake and terrorizes the boys, yet inadvertently helps Gus when it counts.
- Morris Engdahl: A local thug who menaces the Drum brothers and becomes an early suspect; he dies in a work accident by summer’s end.
- Sheriff Gregor: A fair, steady lawman trying to navigate truth amid grief and small-town pressure.
- The Sweeneys (Avis and Edna): The Drums’ neighbors whose marital turmoil spills into Nathan’s counseling and the boys’ clandestine observations.
- Bobby Cole: A “simple” child whose death on the tracks in the Prologue foreshadows the summer’s mounting losses.
- Frank’s Grandfather (Oscar): Ruth’s wealthy, overbearing father who disapproves of Nathan’s vocation but remains fiercely protective of family.
- Liz: Frank’s kind step-grandmother, a stabilizing presence for the boys during their darkest days.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
The Drums form the story’s emotional core. Nathan and Ruth’s marriage—anchored by love but strained by calling, regret, and grief—sets the tone for the family’s struggle. Among the siblings, Frank’s daring complements Jake’s empathy, and both boys orbit Ariel, whose promise and loss shape their identities. Gus, the “uncle” in the basement, stands as Nathan’s wartime brother and the boys’ worldly protector, both challenging and reinforcing the family’s moral compass.
The Brandts mirror and complicate the Drums. Emil and Ruth share a past that tempts Ruth with an alternate life, while Emil and Nathan—two men scarred by war—maintain a tense, respectful bond over chess and silence. Ariel’s connection to both Karl and Emil pulls her between public expectation and private longing, entangling the families in a web of love, secrecy, and guilt. Lise’s fierce devotion to Emil collides with Ariel’s future, turning misunderstanding and isolation into catastrophe.
Outsiders reveal the town’s fault lines. Warren Redstone’s treatment exposes New Bremen’s prejudice; he is presumed guilty because he is different. Gus and Lise, each marginalized in different ways, find unexpected allies in the Drum boys—especially Jake—who meet vulnerability with compassion. As suspicion spreads, alliances harden: some characters cling to appearances, while others choose costly truth.
Ultimately, the community’s bonds and betrayals lay bare family secrets and bonds. Friendships forged in war, loves deferred, and loyalties tested by grief intersect to reveal how ordinary people fail, forgive, and endure—and how grace threads through even the most shattered relationships.
Character Themes
- Faith and Doubt: Embodied by Nathan’s steadfast humility under trial and Ruth’s rejection of belief in her grief.
- Innocence and Experience: Frank and Jake are thrust from carefree childhood into moral complexity and loss.
- Outsiders and Judgment: Gus, Warren Redstone, Lise, and Karl expose the town’s reflex to ostracize what it fears or cannot name.
- The Scars of War: Nathan, Gus, and Emil carry trauma that shapes their choices—quiet faith, hard drinking, and creative isolation, respectively.