Spirit Crossing

I've previously read two books by William Kent Krueger. They are This Tender Land which I reviewed here and The River We Remember which I reviewed on this blog here .   I obtained my copies of both books from the facilitator of the formerly F2F book club that I now attend online. 

 Apparently, Blogger has decided to make important formatting options less available since the last time I wrote a review here on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer.  It's just an inconvenience, but I wish they hadn't done that.

 Spirit Crossing is my third Krueger novel which I just finished. It's #20 in the Cork O'Conner thriller series, but I hadn't read any of the previous books in the series. I am not the sort of person who reads in order.  Reading out of order has never been a problem for me.  

I learned that Spirit Crossing, the title of this novel, is a sacred place on the Jiibay River in Minnesota.  Jiibay means ghost in the language of the local indigenous people.   There are protests over an oil pipeline in this area. 

Cork O'Connor, the series protagonist, is a former sheriff in Aurora, Minnesota.  He is part Irish and part Anishinaabe.  The Wikipedia article about this native people can be found at Anishinaabe, but Ojibwe is frequently used as this people's name throughout Spirit Crossing. 

 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow confused matters with his narrative poem Hiawatha.  Hiawatha is supposed to have been an Ojibwe warrior, but Longfellow's poem was about the formation of the League of the Iroquois in what is now New York.  I'm not sure why a Midwestern Ojibwe would have been a central character in such a narrative.  

But let's get back to the book I'm discussing. This is going to be my complete review of Spirit Crossing. I will be posting a briefer version on Goodreads.

                                                       

 

Cork O'Connor's grandson, whose legal name is Aaron Smalldog O'Connor, is nicknamed Waaboo which means little rabbit in Ojibwe.  Waaboo is only seven years old, yet he is a pivotal character in Spirit Crossing.  He is known by his nickname throughout the novel.  Waaboo is believed to be paranormally gifted.

There was a young woman from a wealthy family named Olivia Hamilton who had disappeared.  The FBI was involved in the search for her because it was thought that she might have been taken to another state.  Olivia's family was offering $50K for information leading to the finding of Olivia.  

When a grave was found in a wooded area, Waaboo said that the woman buried there was lost and that she looked like an Ojibwe.  If this was true, this meant that she couldn't be Olivia Hamilton.  The FBI lost interest.  Waaboo's father, Daniel, took Waaboo home while Cork O'Connor stayed at the grave site.

I learned the identity of the woman who was buried in that grave on page 140.  In most crime novels the victim or victims would be mentioned during the first chapter.  To have it take more than a hundred pages is highly unusual. This woman had been missing, and no one cared enough to report it to the authorities.  Daniel thought no one reported her missing because she was Native American.

Tragedy played a central role in this novel.  I tend to think that there is enough sadness in real life to want to see very much of it in fiction.