Book Review: A retired small-town cop searches for missing girls in William Kent Krueger’s mystery

Cork O’Connor, whose wife is a full-blooded Ojibwe and who is half Native American himself, retired from his job as Aurora, Minnesota, police chief a while back. He now runs a fast-food place, but when trouble comes to Minnesota’s Great North, Cork still is apt to end up in the middle of it.

In “Spirit Crossing,” William Kent Krueger’s 20th novel featuring Cork, there’s trouble aplenty.

For starters, the daughter of an influential politician is missing, and the FBI, state law enforcement agencies and the press are all over it. Oil pipeline construction is about to intrude on the wetlands of Spirit Crossing, an area sacred to the Native Americans, and the protesters and counter-protesters are gathering.

Meanwhile, Cork’s daughter, Annie, who worked as an aide worker in Central America for years, has just returned home. With her, she’s brought a Guatemalan nurse named Maria and a shattering secret she is reluctant to reveal to anyone.

The action begins innocently when 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 shack in the woods. As they near the patch, Waaboo discovers a shallow grave and says he can hear a sad girl’s spirit calling to him.

FBI and state law enforcement agencies descend, seizing control and ordering local authorities not to interfere. But when the body ends up being that of a Native American girl, they lose interest.

The investigation falls to Cork’s successor, Aurora Police Chief Marsha Dross, who enlists Cork and the Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. Soon they 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 fearful of Waaboo’s visions targets him for murder.

Krueger has no Native American blood himself, but as usual he treats native culture and mysticism with understanding and respect. His prose and character development are superb, and his vivid descriptions bring Minnesota’s north woods to life.

“Spirit Crossing” returns to three of the author’s familiar themes: the rape of the natural world in the pursuit of profit, the mistreatment of Native Americans, and, with emphasis this time, that thousands of Native American women and girls are missing and not much ever seems to be done about it.

The author puts this thought in the mouth of one of Cork’s relatives: “To be an Indian is to walk with 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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