Readers and writers: Three bestselling Minnesota authors don’t disappoint with new fiction
September is starting with a bang, book-wise: Three bestselling, award-winning Minnesota writers are launching new fiction with local readings.
Trust us when we tell you they are at the top of their game.
“The River We Remember”: by William Kent Krueger (Atria, $28.99)
She thought about everything that had happened in Black Earth County, all the death associated with the Alabaster, and she understood that there had been no interest in the river, either good or evil. If the river did possess spirit, as the Sioux believed, then that spirit seemed to Charlie so vast that it was probably blind to all the small things that occurred along its course. If the spirit was aware that she dangled her feet in its current, it gave no sign of caring. And Jimmy Quinn and Hannah Klein and Noah Bluestone’s great-great-grandfather and the nameless white woman whose life, legend said, had been lost on Inkpadua Bend, none of this mattered to the spirit of the Alabaster. What mattered was the serving of its ultimate purpose, which God alone knew. — from “The River We Remember”
“The River We Remember,” one of the most anticipated novels of the season, is Kent Krueger’s fourth standalone novel, joining 19 books in his bestselling Cork O’Connor series. It’s about a town recovering from memories of wars and how the land affects the citizens of the Minnesota river town of Jewel. As usual, Krueger’s sense of place and depictions of the Alabaster river valley are lovely and a touch mystical. In one spot, where legend had it that a woman died, people hear sounds of weeping. She was killed during the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862, a conflict still reverberating in the county.
The story begins in 1958, when emotionally and physically wounded men have returned from World War II and Korea. On Memorial Day the fish-chewed corpse of Jimmy Quinn, the town’s largest landowner and most unpopular citizen, is found in the Alabaster river. Sheriff Brody Dern, decorated war hero who feels he is a fraud, investigates the scene and, contrary to his oath of office, wipes everything clean of fingerprints.
Dern wants to point to suicide or accidental drowning as reasons for Quinn’s death, but his old deputy and former sheriff Connie Graff keeps pushing toward a theory of murder. In this small town that calls itself “the gem of the prairie,” rumors circulate like lightning that the killer was Noah Bluestone, a Native American retired from a career with the Marines, who was heard arguing with Quinn, for whom he worked. Noah was always an outsider in his hometown, and when he returned with a Japanese wife they were both outsiders to residents who still regarded Japan as the enemy.
When Bluestone is arrested he refuses to speak about the dead man or offer any defense. It means that his “voice” in court will be female lawyer Charlie, another Jewel resident who’d returned home. Meanwhile, his pretty young wife, Kyoko, tends their small farm alone, except for an old dog. A woman who lost everything in her own country, soft-spoken Kyoko is small but has a spine of steel.
Tensions and rumors mount as we meet those around Brody — his sister-in-law, with whom he’s having a clandestine affair; Angie, kind-hearted owner of the local cafe who is fond of Brody and has a dark secret past; Brody’s dog, Hector, and Angie’s teenage son, Scott Madison.
Teen boys learning to become men appear often in Krueger’s writing. His Edgar award-winner “Ordinary Grace,” set in 1961, is about the family of Frank Drum, son of the town pastor and his artistic, frustrated mother. The next, “This Tender Land,” is a sort-of Huckleberry Finn story of four orphans who escape an Indian boarding school and go on a river journey during the Great Depression.
In “The River We Remember” Scott Madison’s involvement in things he knows isn’t right, and subsequent violence, will break your heart. Born with a “hole in his heart,” his mom and grandmother watch him constantly. Scott is a child of the ’50s, reading “Peyton Place” for the sex passages, and watching John Wayne war movies in which Americans always win. But as he talks about war and death with the men who have returned from battles he realizes that the movies don’t show real-life fighting or consider the aftermath. When Scott’s friend’s abusive stepfather enters the story, and the boys set out to find the bully, Scott does something that will change his life.
It’s easy to describe a novel’s plot. It’s harder to capture the lyricism of Krueger’s writing, especially descriptions of the landscape and humans related to it: “With people, we fall in love too easily, it seems, and too easily fall out of love. But with the land it’s different. We abide much. We can pour our sweat and blood, our very hearts into a piece of earth and get nothing in return but fields of hail-crushed soybean plants or drought-withered cornstalks or fodder for a plague of locusts, and still we love this place enough to die for it. Or kill. In Black Earth County, people understand these things.”
So while “The River We Remember” could be considered a crime story, it’s also about community, its strengths, its prejudices, its secrets.
Krueger embarks on a book tour this week that begins locally at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, at Once Upon a Crime mystery bookstore, 604 W. 26th St., Mpls. Here are his other appearances:
Criminal Cocktail Hour, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept.6, The Grand Banquet Hall, 301 S. Second St., Stillwater, presented by Valley Bookseller. $10 (valleybookseller.com); 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6, Barnes & Noble, 2100 N. Snelling Ave., Roseville; 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 8, Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Ave., White Bear Lake; 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 8, Mount Calvary Lutheran Church, 301 County Road 19, Excelsior, presented by Excelsior Bay Books, free with purchase of the book, $5 without book purchase (excelsiorbaybooks.com); 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 2, in conversation with Minnesota author Ben Percy, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.
“Just Do This One Thing For Me”: by Laura Zimmermann (Dutton, $19.99)
I don’t mean to suggest that it was easy to wrap our momsicle in a tarp and bungee her into a hunting sled. We were just being practical, more task than trauma. We weren’t “over” it. We probably never will be, entirely. Besides, the AfterHeidi who showed up to harass me felt more like the real her. A body, at some point, is just more stuff. — from “Just Do This One Thing For Me!”
It takes a talented writer to give us a story about sibling love and their dead, frozen mother.
That’s what Laura Zimmermann has done in “Just Do This One Thing For Me,” one of the most humorous, touching novels published this year. Although it’s marketed as young adult, this book will mesmerize adults too.
As the suspenseful story begins, 17-year-old Drew is hoping to leave rural Wisconsin to go to college so she is free of her larcenous but charming mother, Heidi, who runs an internet scam involving fake product reviews as well other hustles, such as getting insurance coverage through an employee who doesn’t exist. Heidi’s favorite plea to Drew is “just do this one thing for me” and good daughter Drew has always done it. Now Heidi is missing after blithely putting Drew in charge of Carna, her brilliant, cranky, 15-year-old sister, and their 8-year-old half-brother, Lochlan, adored by both girls.
During a New Year’s Eve party for Drew’s friends, during which a guest is puking all over the living room, the sisters find their mother’s frozen body in a shed. (This is not a spoiler; it’s the catalyst for the main story.)
The girls debate what to do, afraid they will be accused of something if they call the authorities. Their largely indifferent father, who lives on a lake, will not be helpful. They solve that problem for the moment, but it falls to Drew to be the head of household without their mother, including keeping the scams going and paying bills. A planner and follower of rules, Drew will do anything to keep her little underage family together, including lying to a federal IRS agent who’s looking for Heidi so he can ask about who is cashing dead Grandma’s Social Security checks. She sometimes gets help from Carna, who dislikes almost everyone she meets, including, sometimes, her older sister. The siblings’ snippy conversations are one of the joys of this book.
Another joy is sweet Loch, who was told by his mother that his father, Capt. West, was a war hero killed in combat. Even though West doesn’t exist, he sometimes visits Drew to ask how his “son” is doing. Dead Heidi’s ghost also pops in and out sometimes, making un-helpful comments to Drew.
Difficulties mount as the tax guy gets closer and the sisters have to decide what to do with dead Heidi in the shed if the weather turns warmer.
School Library Journal is right to call this novel “witty, off-beat and strangely charming.”
Zimmermann, who won a Minnesota Book Award for her debut, “My Eyes Are Up Here,” is a multiple-time champion of the Twin Cities Moth, dedicated to finding people from all walks of life to tell inspired stories, and presenter of the Twin Cities GrandSLAM story slams.
She will launch her book at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 6, at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul, in conversation with Andrew Karre, senior executive editor at Dutton Books, who’s edited other Minnesota writers including Kate Allen, Shannon Gibney, Junauda Petrus and Carrie Mesrobian. This is a ticketed event. Go to redballoonbookshop.com/event.
“The Dark Lord’s Daughter”: by Patricia C. Wrede (Random House, $17.99)
The thing that had been her tablet computer now resembled a spider monkey with cat ears. Its face was a little flatter than the faces of the monkeys at the zoo, and its fur was longer and redder, but it had the same flexible tail. It shook itself, and a pair of red wings like a bat’s unfolded from its back. “This is a vast improvement,” it announced, and proceeded to climb onto Kayla’s shoulder, where it settled in and wrapped its tail around her neck.
Wrede, author of the beloved Enchanted Forest Chronicles and the Mairelon and Frontier Magic series, blends computers with magic for a romping, funny, sometimes scary middle-grade fantasy about 14-year-old Kayla. She’s at the Minnesota State Fair with her mother, Riki, and little brother, Del, when they’re suddenly whisked to another world by a man who’s been searching for them for 10 years because Kayla is the new Dark Lady of the land. She always knew she was adopted, but never dreamed she had a powerful biological father who left her with a strange kingdom filled with menace.
There’s lots of magic in this fast-paced story that includes shifting castle walls, secret staircases, citizens who are wary of this newcomer Dark Lady who has vast powers she doesn’t know how to use. Also, two talking dragon skulls and a cursed mountain spirit. What Wrede does so well is combine aspects of human world technology, including young Del’s enthusiasm for video games that comes in handy, and the traditions of Kayla’s new world that include killing or imprisoning people, not to mention centuries-old battles between forces of light and dark worlds. She has to contend with members of her new family who don’t want her invested as the Dark Lady, as well as learning her little brother has unexpected magical powers too, which he wants to use mostly to blow stuff up.
Kayla’s tablet turns into a “familiar” she names Macavinchy that looks like a benign version of the flying monkeys in “The Wizard of Oz.” The human and magical worlds meet in a tavern where musicians with old instruments listen to Macavinchy play Kayla’s favorite contemporary songs and try to mimic the 21st-century beat. She’s grateful when Macavinchy uses the computer firewall and other technology to get them out of bad situations.
Kayla is a strong girl, making mostly good decisions when she’s clueless about what’s going on. She is adamant that no matter what the sacred Traditions say, she will not imprison or kill anyone. Del is a sweet kid who loves all the weird stuff around them, and their mom wants to keep both of her children out of harm’s way so they can go home. But to do that Kayla has to learn a lot of magic that will unlock the curse on her castle.
In the end, readers will want to know what happened to Kayla and her family. Booklist answers that in a review that calls the book “a fresh, engaging fantasy with a sequel to come.”
Wrede attended Carleton College and earned a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. After being a financial analyst she has made a living as a fiction writer since 1985. The Oz books, hints of which appear in “The Dark Lord’s Daughter,” are among her favorites.
She will launch this inventive, heart-warming book at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 5, at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul.
