Cork O’Connor, whose wife is full-blooded Ojibwe and half Native American herself, recently retired as police chief in Aurora, Minnesota. He now runs a fast food restaurant, but if trouble comes to Minnesota’s Great North, it’s still possible Cork could end up in the middle of it.
In “Spirit Crossing,” William Kent Krueger’s twentieth novel starring Cork, there are plenty of problems.
For starters, the daughter of an influential politician goes missing, and the FBI, law enforcement agencies, and the press are all over it. Oil pipeline construction is about to encroach on the Spirit Crossing wetlands, an area sacred to Native Americans, and protesters and counter-protesters are gathering.
Meanwhile, Cork’s daughter, Annie, who worked for years as an assistant in Central America, has just returned home. She brings with her a Guatemalan nurse named Maria and a crushing secret that she is reluctant to reveal to anyone.
The action begins innocently enough as Cork leads several members of his large family, including his 7-year-old grandson Waaboo (Little Rabbit), to a secret blueberry patch near an abandoned cabin in the woods. As they approach the field, Waaboo discovers a shallow grave and says he can hear the ghost of a sad girl calling to him.
The FBI and state law enforcement agencies swoop in, seize control, and order local authorities not to get involved. But when the body turns out to be that of an Indian girl, they lose interest.
The investigation is in the hands of Cork’s successor, Aurora Police Chief Marsha Dross, who is engaging Cork and the Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. They soon discover more bodies of Native American girls, Cork suspects they may be connected to the missing white girl, suspicion falls on pipeline workers, and someone afraid of Waaboo’s visions accuses him of murder.
Krueger himself has no Native American blood, but as usual treats native culture and mysticism with understanding and respect. His prose and character development are fantastic, and his vivid descriptions bring Minnesota’s boreal forests to life.
“Spirit Crossing” returns to three of the author’s well-known themes: the rape of the natural world for profit, the mistreatment of Native Americans, and, this time with emphasis, that thousands of Native American women and girls are missing and not always there, it seems much needs to be done about it.
The author puts this thought into the mouth of a Cork relative: “To be an Indian is to walk at a loss. It goes before us and it follows us. It is our shadow self.”
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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels, including “The Dread Line.”
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