... another in the series I have become addicted to by William Kent Krueger. Following the same family living in the northern reaches of Minnesota. These people have as much drama in their lives as the afternoon stories my grandmother used to watch on television when I was a kid. Cork O'Connor will find himself lured into some crisis, and end up with a convoluted trail of bedlam, often bloody, occasionally with numerous corpses, that it takes an entire book to untangle. His family is often drawn in, and their lives in the home on Gooseberry Lane disrupted when circumstances bring chaos into their lives.
In the most recent read, Cork is asked by a pair of young adults to help find their missing grandfather. The parents were killed years ago, and the grandfather raised the two children, with the boy and girl being cared for by nannies, and sent to expensive boarding schools. The grandfather, John Harris grew up in the small town of Aurora where the O'Connor family lives, Cork several years younger than John, though they were neighbors and friends. When the Harris family: John and two young adults were out on a camping trip in the Boundary Waters, the elder Harris vanished. Search and Rescue teams spent days looking, but found nothing. After law enforcement ended their efforts, Cork was hired.
This takes place two weeks before Cork's daughter Jenny is to be married. When Cork and the girl also disappear into the wilderness, the O'Connor family begins a desperate search. Cork's son Steve comes home, enters the picture and joins in the search, along with Jenny's finance, Cork's friend and mentor Henry, a native healer and Rani, Henry's protege. The plot twists and turns, as the abductees are forced to travel north into Canada, paddling canoes, portaging between lakes, camping in increasingly cold and difficult weather.
No spoiler here. Just lots of tense moments in the telling/reading of the tale as I listened while driving. I've listened to so many of the stories by Krueger, and feel like I am personally acquainted with those characters who people his tales of the north woods and Ojibwa nation, I don't want them to end. And especially do not want to get to the end of all the books he has written - running out of stories about the O'Connors and extended family.
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