I stumbled upon this intense crime novel while searching for books set in Minnesota. Why you might ask? My latest romantic suspense novel is set there and I was looking for comparable titles. Is it comparable? In some ways, yes.
Both our stories are set in the wilds of Minnesota on Anishinabe territory and include some references to culture. Both involve romance and mystery. Both involve heroes and corrupt sheriffs. And, in both our books, the landscape is a major character that affects the plot and the behavior of the characters.
But Krueger’s novel is definitely a crime novel, beginning with the murder of a prominent judge, and the story chronicles retired sheriff, Corcoran O’Connor’s obsession to find the killer along with a missing boy, Paul LeBeaux.
I read this book twice as I sometimes do, especially with a crime novel. The first time I need to know what happens; the next time I want to pick up the nuances of how the writer unravels the mystery.
First published in 1998, Iron Lake was Krueger’s debut novel and he won awards for it:
a Barry Award, a Best First Novel (1999), and a Minnesota Book Award (1999). I understand why. Krueger is a craftsman. Unique memorable characters, mythical references, and a setting to die for, all propel the story to a suspenseful climax and resolution.
The story begins with a flashback to a bear hunt and foreshadows the appearance, or at least the involvement, of the mythical Windigo—a powerful monster who devours its victims. In this story, when the Windigo calls your name, you’re destined to die.
Cork O’Connor is part-Irish, part-Anishinabe, while Krueger is not. He credits two Anishinabe people: Barbara Briseno of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and Alex Ghebregzi who helped with language and culture. And his research includes books by ethnographers, Francis Densmore and storyteller Basil Johnson, both of whom I read back in the nineties when I was studying at Trent.
Iron Lake takes place during a winter blizzard and this unique atmosphere draws you in. The lake is deep frozen, except for an area of open water, snow-covered, and the playground of snowmobilers and ice-fishermen. It reminds me of my time living beside Lake Scugog in Ontario.
This is a book to snuggle with on winter nights, knowing you’re not out on that frozen lake being hunted by the killers you’re trying to catch, or the ravenous Windigo. According to Krueger’s website, there are now eighteen books in the Cork O’Connor Mystery Series. That’s a lot of Minnesota adventure to catch up on. I look forward to coming back to this series time and time again.
J.P. McLean speeds us down a deftly drawn and dangerous new road in Blood Mark, the first book in her new paranormal thriller series. Baby Jane Doe was abandoned at birth at the Joyce Skytrain Station in Vancouver. Perhaps her mother couldn’t stomach the blood red birthmarks that snake around her body from head to toe; the marks that have caused her shame and humiliation and made her an object of study. But why are they there? Who are her parents? And why did they abandon her to the foster care system? Perhaps Jane’s mother had a premonition that her daughter would be gifted with a supernatural power impossible to contain.
Jane is a lucid dreamer. Her nightmares drop her back in time where she’s able to see and hear disturbing scenes: a woman held prisoner, a man murdered. McLean drops new characters into the narrative as Jane’s dreams become more advanced and the introduction of a merciless, narcissistic, psychologist spins the plot into overdrive.
But time travel is always problematic. When Jane realizes she can physically materialize within a dream as a kind of shadow and interact with objects, the stakes rise yet again. She could issue a warning or save a life. Change history. But should she? To manipulate an outcome could create a paradox; a causal loop that would effect the future and hence the past and on and on it goes.
Enter Ethan, a handsome bar manager who sees beyond Jane’s blood stripes to the beauty beneath. Ethan is the man we all pray is good because with Ethan, Jane’s birthmarks began to disappear from the sole up. But is Ethan her chance at a normal life? Her soul mate? Or are his intentions more sinister?
Someone has been trying to murder Jane since she was born. McLean continues to flesh out Jane’s backstory through her lucid dreams even as the blood marks on her flesh diminish. What was their purpose to begin with? What will happen when they all disappear?
McLean’s writing is clear, gentle, relentless, and original. Triple viewpoints interweave— Jane, her best friend Sadie, and Rick, the twisted psychologist—and drive the plot like Jane drives her Honda Rebel 500. The language is gritty casual as befits a contemporary novel where one woman works as a prostitute (Sadie) and the other, in a greenhouse (Jane) and both seek solace in bars. And, this edgy, intelligent, psychological thriller has tantalizing touches of Inca myth that will capture your soul from beginning to end.
Yet McLean’s high octane concepts drive our intellect. We learn of lucid dreaming, cataplexy, and dabble in Inca myth and ritual. These are ordinary characters faced with extraordinary circumstances and the author keeps us guessing until the very end. McLean is the author of The Gift Legacy—a highly praised six-book series about a woman who learns she can fly. Odd are, Blood Mark will fly too … right off the shelves.
A sexy, captivating read, Prodigal Summer is as important now as when it was first published twenty years ago. I read it then and just reread it again. Kingsolver is an artist, poet, biologist, eco-warrior, and extraordinary storyteller. She wraps her words around these intriguing characters like vines on a frontier trellis.
Over the course of one verdant summer, we dwell in the farms and mountains of southern Appalachia with three intensely independent woman who, like Kingsolver, are all enmeshed in an eco-myth. These timeless women take it upon themselves to change their worlds and the disparate men who enter their lives.
Deanna Wolfe is a forty-something forest ranger living alone atop the mountain in her woodsy cabin until a charismatic sheep farmer turns her life around. As sexy and fulfilling as he is, Eddie Bondo has invaded Deanna’s mountain to shoot coyotes–a bane to his existence but treasures to our forester. Deanna does her best to educate Eddie on the perils of killing off predators at the expense of prey.
Lusa marries into the old Widener family then a freak accident leaves her burdened with a farm and no husband. Using her wits, she devises a way to make a living on the farm without giving in to growing fields of tobacco and being puppeted by her brother-in-laws. At the same time, Lusa worms her way into the hearts of the Widener sisters, their husbands, and children—especially her sexy seventeen-year-old nephew, Rickie. Lusa, whose passion is bugs, teaches us about the insect life in Appalachia.
Nannie Rawley mothered Deanna way back when. Nannie tries desperately to convince her neighbour old Garnett Walker to stop spraying his chestnut trees with chemicals. Nannie farms organically and his poisons are killing everything on both sides of the fenceline. A feud turns into something beautiful and we learn all about why it’s crucial to farm organically. While he’s learning a new way to be in the world, old Garnett teaches Lusa how to raise goats. All of the characters are as interconnected as Nature herself.
Kingsolver offers us a feminist tale starring maid, mother, and crone in this charming book. A tribute to Rachel Carson, writer of Silent Spring, Prodigal Summer is a classic with a timely and meaningful message.
Fantasy sometimes gets a bad rap, but good fantasy ushers us through the hearts and minds of beings we can identify and sympathize with because it’s driven by the human condition. Affected by forces both benevolent and evil, the protagonist often fights to restore justice. Exceptional fantasy is a keystone, offering us insight, adventure, and escape while leaving us better people in its wake. Way of the Argosi is such a book.
To put it in its place, Way of the Argosi is a prequel to de Castell’s Spellslinger series and branded Young Adult Fantasy; though as is the case with most YA, this book will be as well-received as Lord of the Rings by adult readers. And good news, a sequel, Fall of the Argosi, is on its way.
Sebastien de Castell (this is his real name by the way) introduces us to an extraordinary orphan. Following the dark path of the mythic Hero’s Journey, first conceived by Joseph Campbell, eleven-year-old Ferius Parfax sets out alone after her tribe is massacred by a band of mages. This is a book about power, politics, and genocide and, most importantly, how to not only survive against adversity but change the world for the better. Ferius’s people, the Mahdek are the victims in this vicious war.
Along the way, Ferius meets Durrall Brown, a “meddling frontier philosopher” who is in my humble opinion, one of the greatest characters ever written. Durrall Argos, the man in brown, is a cowboy Buddhist who carries a razor-sharp Tarot deck that can cut you as easily as cure you. Brown instructs Ferius, and us, in the Way of the Argosi. Are you hooked yet?
This is a beautifully produced book with a stunning Tarot card cover that features mirrored images of Ferius Parfax and Durrall Brown. Other intricate full-size black and white images drawn by Sally Taylor separate philosophical sections. And there is a detailed map that reminds me of Ireland, as all maps do. Skip the e-book and buy this book in print. It’s a keeper and one you will return to read again and again if only to learn to be a better human being and savour the feel of slipping inside a velvet cloak by a fire on a rainy day.
Sebastien de Castell’s lyrical prose, brilliant world-building, and exceptional dialogue will keep you turning pages long after your candles have burnt low. “I was tired of living like a wandering ghost, punished by the sight of the hideous, scrawny, sexless creature I glimpsed in grimy pools of street water. I wanted to be clean again” (65). I hear echoes of Tolkien and Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Another bonus is that de Castell was a fencing choreographer; something evident in the cracking fight scenes that take us directly into the fighter’s mind. Did I say I love this book?
Here you will enter a society like many in Earth’s history where cultures exterminate cultures only to be wiped out themselves. But within the violence are those who illustrate compassion, courage, and wisdom; those who walk with the Way of Water.
Sebastien de Castell
*published in the Ottawa Review of Books, October 2021
Chi’miigwech to my friend Tamara at Western Sky Books for putting this book in my hands last Sunday and to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for writing this cure. Easy now, white ladies, the cure is a response to one Susanna Moodie, whose Roughing It In the Bush (1852) is a racist, colonial, settler account of her arrival in her New World. I read the aforementioned text in 1997 and wrote in my journal: “Moodie is a classist and racist—not my idea of Canadian classic literature.” (Yes, I have journals that date back to the early 90s.). I downloaded Moodie’s text for free on Kindle (cause why pay for something like that) and tried to read it again just to compare this to that, but I couldn’t get beyond the first chapter of Moodie’s vehement verbosity. She starts out by slamming the Irish immigrants and moves on from there. Nothing but perfect white homes and sun rippling on water suits Mrs. Pastoral Moodie.
While Moodie uses far too many words to describe her dissatisfaction with “the bush,” Simpson sprinkles her text with enough Ojibwe words to make we want to enrol in an Anishinaabemowin language course. (And forgive me if I use these terms in the wrong way. I’m trying, and hate being only a zhaaganaash.) I knew a few Anishinaabe words before I read this text and I know a few more now. I finished the paperback last night and then, this morning, I went through the whole text using the online Ojibwe People’s Dictionary Simpson recommends in her Author’s Notes, while eating pancakes and maple syrup and thinking of home and Niinatig, the Maple Tree. I penciled in the translations where needed. I apologize, Tara. I know you hate my margin notes. But I’m an academic at heart and need to know. Still, I refuse to look stuff up online when I’m settling into dreamland with a good book; hence the need for a breakfast session.
Anishinaabemowin is a beautiful language that interweaves people, land, weather, culture, and feelings in a soft, gentle, musical rhythm. For example, Makwa Giiziis is the Moon When Bears Wake Up — much better than February, don’t you think? Minomiin Giizis is the Moon of Wild Rice — August or September depending where you live. That connection to what’s happening on the land makes me feel soft and warm inside. That’s how I feel as I read this book, actually. There’s quiet gentle healing here and a good dose of sarcastic “haha” humour (which as we know is healing in itself.)
I’m reading the sign and letting the 4:45 a.m. departure time sink in, sipping the lemon water in the shitty plastic cup, when he approaches me with all the confidence the trifecta of obliviousness and delusion and patriarchy can provide.
We talk about things, but not really, because I can’t remember who he is.
He tells me he’s the director general of Indian Affairs and sometimes I have a poker face and sometimes I just have a face.
He is so clean and shiny. I’m in flannel plaid pyjama pants with a not-matching plaid flannel shirt because who gives a fuck. He has a bureaucratic overcoat and adult shoes that require regular neoliberal maintenance. I’m in bare feet. He looks like he’s lived in Ottawa for too long. I look like I’ve lived in Peterborough for too long (179).
I grew up on Anishinaabe territory (along the north shore of Lake Ontario) later lived near Lake Scugog, and then went to Trent University near the aforementioned city of Peterborough, where I learned from traditional teachers and Elders. If I were ever to move back to Ontario that is where I would settle. I don’t know how authentic this map is, but it will give you some idea of the land of which I speak. And, of course, the Anishinaabe people and their neighbours were here long before maps were drawn. Since forever.
At any rate, this is a book review and all I can say is, “read this book.” Now that I’ve penciled in the meaning of all the words I guessed at (and got most right from the context by the way) I’m going to read it again because it just makes me feel good — not numb, not guilty, not sad, just good. I’m not sure if it was Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s intention to make white ladies feel good, but it worked for this one. Perhaps this is the cure of which she speaks.
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