William Kent Krueger is an American crime novelist, born in Wyoming in 1950 and long settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His Cork O'Connor series follows a former sheriff of mixed Ojibwe and Irish descent through the small towns and reservation country of northern Minnesota. It began with Iron Lake (1998), which won the Anthony and Barry awards for best first novel, and has run to twenty books, most recently Spirit Crossing. Blood Hollow and Mercy Falls each took the Anthony Award for Best Novel....
Purgatory Ridge
Purgatory Ridge
Synopsis
A logging mill outside Aurora is blown apart in the night, killing the watchman. The mill belongs to Karl Lindstrom, and the timber he means to cut includes Our Grandfathers, a stand of ancient white pine the Anishinaabe hold sacred.
Cork O'Connor is asked to investigate, and finds himself standing in the worst possible place: he is part Anishinaabe, his wife Jo is the tribe's lawyer, and his own family's safety is bound up in the outcome. When a kidnapping follows the bombing, the dispute stops being about trees.
Purgatory Ridge is the third Cork O'Connor novel, and the one that most directly sets the claims of the Ojibwe community against the economy of the white town that surrounds it.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
Cork O'ConnorProtagonist
Former sheriff, investigating a mill bombing that divides his town and his own loyalties.
Jo O'ConnorSupporting
Cork's wife, the lawyer representing the Anishinaabe against the mill owner.
Karl LindstromSupporting
The industrialist whose mill is bombed and whose logging plans threaten sacred pine.
Henry MelouxSupporting
Ojibwe medicine man and Cork's mentor.
