God's Country by William Kent Krueger

 Published by Atria on August 18, 2026

Henry Meloux, the wise old Midewiwin who counsels series protagonist Cork O’Conner, is fond of aphorisms like “Every falling leaf comes to rest where it was always meant to be” and ““In every moment, the world becomes a different place.” Cork finds himself in need of aphorisms to understand the duality of his nature. Cork has had such internal struggles before, but I appreciate William Kent Krueger’s effort to instill moral doubt in the mind of his protagonist as opposed to the self-righteous anger that motivates so many thriller heroes.

God’s Country blends a wilderness adventure with a crime story. The action takes place in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Series fans know that Cork is a former sheriff who closely aligns with the Native American population in that area, including his wife Rainy.

The story begins with Cork’s son, Stephen, and his grandson, Waaboo, sharing a vision of Cork being eaten by a wolf. Cork consults with Henry, his spiritual adviser, to learn the meaning of the vision. As usual, Henry gives Cork a cryptic answer, finally settling on “maybe you are the wolf.”

Cork takes a canoe trip into the boundary waters with two of Cork’s sons and their sons, as well as the former priest Mal Thorne. Cork learns that Cordell Bishop, a guide, was hired to take some white men on a camping trip. Cork worries when he comes across a campsite that hasn’t been returned to pristine condition, as that is something Cordell would never permit. When Cork later finds a dead body, he sends his fellow campers home and takes off in search of Cordell.

Cork eventually discovers that the men are the children of a criminal who hid something of value in the boundary waters. Cordell guided their father years before. They take Cordell hostage and force him to recreate their father’s journey. As Cork follows them with the intent of freeing Cordell, he is taken hostage himself. Murders ensue.

The plot is entertaining and more plausible than those found in the typical modern thriller, but the story is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is William Kent Krueger’s reverent description of the wilderness, including its timeless beauty and its dangers. Wolves make their customary appearance, perhaps in an effort to communicate something to Cork, perhaps because they view him as a potential breakfast.

The second is Cork’s struggle between his desire to believe that the two criminals are capable of redemption and his desire to punish them with death for their crimes. While that struggle leads to extended discussions of religion and philosophy, none are heavy-handed. The story recognizes that few people are wholly good or wholly evil, that evil is not necessarily intrinsic but the product of how we are raised, and that most of us struggle to overcome temptation and allow our better natures to control our behavior.

God’s Country is a perfect fit for lovers of wilderness adventures. The story has enough action to satisfy thriller fans, but its heart lies in Cork’s fight to overcome his own evil desires rather than his fight with the novel’s villains.

RECOMMENDED

Apostle's Cove by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on September 2, 2025

Apostle’s Cove tells two stories, separated in time by a quarter century. The story begins in the present, when Cork O’Connor’s son tells him that a man he sent to prison might be innocent. The novel quickly moves back to a time when Cork was a sheriff to explain why Axel Boshey was convicted of murder, even though Cork doubted that his confession was true.

A girl named Chastity was the daughter of a woman named Aphrodite. Chastity wasn’t particularly chaste, but she didn’t have nearly as many sex partners as her mother. Chastity married a Native American named Greensky but had at least one other lover, raising questions about the paternity of the child born to their marriage.

When Greensky died in an alleged hunting accident, his friend Axel was widely viewed as his killer, despite an investigation that cleared him. Chastity married Axel soon after Greensky’s death and Axel adopted her son. They had a child of their own, whose biological father was also uncertain. They were no longer having sex by the time Chastity’s body was found with multiple wounds made by a fireplace poker.

The novel’s first part follows Cork as he tries to solve Chastity’s murder. A fair amount of evidence points to Axel. He had argued with Chastity that night. He was wildly drunk. She was pregnant with another man’s child. Axel wanted to divorce her, but she threatened to keep the kids from him if he did. He claims to have no memory of killing her, but his clothing, covered with her blood, is found in a nearby shed.

Many members of the community are convinced of Axel’s guilt, including Rocky Martinelli, a deputy sheriff who hates Indians. Cork is less certain, but the matter is taken out of his hands when Axel decides to confess.

In the present, Axel has been in prison for a quarter century and has no great desire to leave. He has started a counseling program to turn around the lives of Native American prisoners. When Cork’s son, an intern at an Innocence Project, finds evidence that Axel might be innocent, Cork sets about reinvestigating the case. That task brings him back to Aphrodite and her collection of lovers, to the town librarian (who may have had a motive to kill Chastity), to a woman who claims to have been purified by an angel who restored her virginity, and to other potential suspects.

Series fans will be familiar with Henry Meloux, a Native American healer who gathers knowledge by listening to the woods. Henry plays a role by suggesting a new path that Axel might follow if he is released from prison, contributing to the novel’s theme of redemption. Fans might also be pleased that Cork’s daughter, a novelist named Jenny, joins the hunt, and that Jenny’s son Waaboo, who senses evil spirits, plays a small but significant role. While I’m not a fan of evil spirits (or good ones, for that matter), the supernatural has little to do with the novel’s outcome.

The characters in Apostle’s Cove have family issues that add interest to the story. The solution to the mystery involves incest, quite a bit of adultery, and a variety of vices. A reader might need a spreadsheet to keep track of suspects and the relationships of characters to other characters, but William Kent Krueger includes enough internal summaries to keep the plot from becoming too confusing to follow.

Cork is a decent person who struggles with his failure to pursue the truth more aggressively twenty-five years earlier. That struggle is simply evidence of his decency. The story repeatedly acknowledges the brutal victimization that Native Americans have suffered at the hands of white haters but avoids a preachy tone. The focus is on the mystery and the steps that Cork takes to solve it. Perhaps readers who are more astute than I will be able to see past the misdirection and solve the puzzle. I was overwhelmed with data and stopped trying at some point, but the story is no less entertaining for being so detailed.

RECOMMENDED

Spirit Crossing by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on August 20, 2024

Spirit Crossing is the latest entry in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series. Cork is a former county sheriff. Now he lends an unofficial hand to friends who work for local police agencies, including tribal officer Daniel English. In Spirit Crossing, Cork shares the spotlight with English and several other characters, including Waaboo, who Daniel's wife found under a rock.

Waaboo sees dead people. We know from earlier novels that some Native characters have visions and can chat with spirits. Waaboo sees a young woman standing in a blueberry patch where her body is buried. It could be the body of Olivia Hamilton or Crystal Two Knives, two women who have recently gone missing. State authorities have been steering the tribal police away from Olivia’s case because her parents have influence and higher authorities need to coddle them.

After Daniel digs up the body, he realizes the victim was a Native. Since Olivia is white, outside law enforcement agencies quickly lose interest. Daniel doesn’t know whether the body is Crystal’s, but he hopes that investigating Crystal’s disappearance might shed light on Olivia’s fate.

Cork and Daniel (sometimes with Waaboo’s help over his protective mother’s objections) join with local cops to solve the mystery. The characters often discuss the reality that a missing white girl leads to obsessive reporting while the media ignore missing Native girls. Krueger tried to make a good point, but he couldn't resist the urge to add human trafficking to the story. Little originality is on display in Spirit Crossing.

Mild action scenes (meaning that characters actually move around) arrive at expected intervals, but this isn’t a pulse-pounding thriller. A bad guy occasionally takes a shot at groups of good guys but never manages to hit one, despite using a deer rifle. It’s hard to believe that Minnesota deer hunters would be such poor shots.

Series fans might appreciate the wrinkle thrown into the characters’ lives when they learn that Cork’s daughter Annie has an inoperable brain tumor. Only Maria, Annie’s lover from Guatemala, knows about Annie’s health condition. If this sounds to you like Telemundo content, I had that same thought.

The characters have folksy, familial, serious conversations about each other’s lives. The accumulated dialog seems like little more than a modernized version of soap opera gossip. Redundant discussions about health and family issues slow the pace of a novel that it is no hurry to reach a destination.

Several asides in the narrative address the fear and anger that accompany an anticipated death, culminating in Henry Meloux’s advice about returning to the Creator with an open heart. Henry, the wise old Native who offers spiritual guidance to anyone who listens, is a stereotype. Unfortunately, redundant conversations about “crossing over” and “walking the path of souls” contribute to the story’s languid pace.

At times, Spirit Crossing reads like Christian lit with Native American religions substituting for Christianity. The characters spend a good bit of time discussing “the Great Mystery” and God and their anger at God and their strained belief in a deity’s existence. Waaboo seems to be plugged into the spirit world and is positioned to reassure everyone that there really is an afterlife, an assurance that comforts the characters and might do the same for some readers.

The characters also spend a good amount of time preaching the value of forgiveness and of understanding the forces that shape people who perform evil acts. I am in favor of forgiveness and understanding but the characters’ repeated discussions of spiritual values impede a story that already proceeds at a slow pace.

The plot is straightforward but less than scintillating. The notion that a bad guy would want to kill Waaboo to stop him from gathering more evidence from dead people seems farfetched to me, but these criminals aren’t the brightest villains. The crime solvers interview people to gather information, but they rely more on Waaboo’s connection with the spirit world than on deduction. This isn’t the kind of mystery that will impress Sherlock Holmes fans, but it might engage series fans.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

Published by Atria Books on September 5, 2023

The River We Remember offers crime fiction fans a balanced blend of plot and characterization. Rooted in dysfunctional families, the story is a murder mystery that sets up suspects who might have committed a murder that caused no great loss to the community. Set in rural Minnesota in the 1950s, the action takes place against a background of post-war hatred of the Japanese and ongoing hatred of Native Americans.

Brody Dern is the sheriff of Black Earth County. Brody saw too much death in the war. He holds himself responsible for a friend’s death and cannot forgive himself for his actions. He later escaped from a Japanese POW camp and regards himself as a coward for seizing the opportunity to escape. Brody is unmarried but is involved in a relationship that does not reflect well upon his character.

Jimmy Quinn is an abusive drunk. He is the county’s largest landowner and is wealthy and powerful for that reason, although he is almost universally despised. He is on his second wife, a relative of his first wife. A hereditary condition caused the death of his first wife and will soon kill the second. Quinn’s conduct with his other family members is appalling. It isn’t surprising that someone finally killed him.

A man comes across Quinn’s dead body in the Alabaster River. A shotgun blast opened holes Quinn’s body that made his innards accessible to hungry catfish. Surmising that the body floated downriver, Brody leads a search for the location at which Quinn entered the river. He finds Quinn’s shotgun in a large pool of blood near the river. Did he shoot himself, either accidentally or in the commission of suicide? In the absence of an explanation for how a man who lost so much blood could have entered the river under his own power, it seems likely that he was murdered.

Brody does his best to avoid drawing that conclusion. He doesn’t think it will be good for the county to search for a murderer who did the community a favor by dispatching Quinn. Circumstances (and the former sheriff’s persistent reminders that Brody has a job to do) nevertheless force Brody to undertake a murder investigation.

Community suspicion quicky focuses on Noah Bluestone, a Dakota Sioux who returned from the war married to a Japanese woman. His race and the race of his wife are two strikes against him in a community that doesn’t see the need for a third strike. Only the courageous publisher of the local paper stands up for Noah’s right to a fair trial. When ambiguous evidence seems to point to Noah’s guilt, he refuses to take any action to defend himself for reasons that become part of the underlying mystery.

Tyler Creasy is another abusive drunk. He’s certain that Noah killed Quinn because Quinn fired Noah and his wife from their jobs as farmhand and housekeeper. Creasy has a son named Del who is a good friend of a boy named Sam. The boys’ mischief forms a subplot that eventually merges with the main story. While subplots pile on other subplots, it is a credit to William Kent Krueger that the story never becomes confusing.

Romance provides additional subplots. Unaware of Brody’s messy romantic entanglement, Sam’s mother Angie would like to have a go at Brody. Like Brody, she has a dark backstory. Whether Brody will (or can) return her affection is a subplot that adds interest to Brody’s life. He’s a troubled man who, despite being haunted by regrettable decisions, is a reasonably decent individual. It is easy for a reader to want Brody’s participation in the story to end well.

The plot is complicated by the drama that infects multiple families who are important to the story. The reader will need to sort through a good bit of dirty laundry to learn whether Noah or someone else killed Quinn.

By the end of the story, other lives are placed in peril, giving rise to a couple of credible action scenes. The conclusion is not entirely happy. I respect Krueger’s willingness to write an honest story that doesn’t pander to readers who want their fictional worlds to be better than the real world. At the same time, the unhappy aspect of the novel is convenient in its creation of an ending that will improve the lives of other characters who will have earned the reader’s sympathy.

Quinn’s complexity is at war with his desire for simplicity. That conflict makes him interesting. The key women in the novel have all lived difficult lives but have all persevered. One became a lawyer who is appointed to defend Noah. The women of greatest importance to the story have managed to retain a sense of decency and compassion. They have a strength that the evil men who surround them lack.

That so many people with such tragic lives have all collected in a rural county in Minnesota might be hard to believe, but who knows the secrets harbored by people who live in remote locations? People do what they want to do, uninhabited by their violation of the values that their community professes to follow. I easily set aside my skepticism about the onrush of subplots so that I could enjoy a strong mystery that is populated by an abundance of well-developed characters.

RECOMMENDED

Fox Creek by William Kent Krueger

Published by ‎ Atria Books on August 23, 2022

The theft of natural resources from Native people is the dominant theme of Fox Creek, but much of the story is a suspenseful wilderness adventure. The novel is the latest in the long-running Cork O’Connor series.

Cork is flipping burgers at his northern Minnesota restaurant, trying to live a peaceful life but still helping people with private investigations. A man who identifies himself as Louis Morriseau asks Cork to help him find his missing wife. Morriseau suspects that Dolores is fooling around with Henry Meloux. Morriseau clearly doesn’t understand that Henry is literally one hundred years old. And while he’s still energetic and might indeed have lead in his aging pencil, Henry is a medicine man and spiritual guide who is more interested in healing people than shagging them.

Cork’s wife Rainy is related to Henry. It doesn’t take Cork long to find Dolores, who has come to Henry is search of guidance. Nor does it take Cork long to learn that the man who contacted him is not Lou Morriseau. It is Lou (the real one) who has gone missing. Lou is a real estate lawyer who has been spending time in Canada for reasons that he hasn’t explained to Dolores.

Cork eventually makes it his mission to help Dolores. He’s joined in that effort by his son Stephen, Rainy, Henry, Lou’s brother Anton and his sister Belle, and various Natives who rally to the cause when needed.

Lou’s disappearance apparently has something to do with a hand-drawn map that bears the word KILLCATIE. Stephen and Belle are tasked with digging into that cryptic clue. The wilderness adventure begins when Henry and Rainy disappear with Dolores. Henry is an unparalleled woodsman, but he’s pursued by a Native tracker of nearly equal skill named LeLoup, who is accompanied by a couple of less skilled killers. As LeLoup tracks Henry’s group, Cork tracks LeLoup.

The story offers a satisfying resolution to the mystery of KILLCATIE, a mystery based on the credible premise that white people are again trying to enrich themselves by depriving Natives of resources. The wilderness adventure is enhanced by vivid descriptions of the Boundary Waters and the perils of staying alive in snowy woods, even when trackers aren’t pursuing with rifles.

The adventure turns into an interesting spiritual journey for some of its participants, although it affects them in different ways. That journey could have been hokey, but William Kent Krueger makes it seem authentic. Krueger is too respectful of Native people to leave the impression that he’s using Native beliefs as a prop. The story ends on a note of hope, in the sense that it suggests that it is never too late to set a life on its correct path. This is always an interesting series, and Fox Creek lives up to Krueger’s high standard.

RRECOMMENDED