When Jimmy Quinn’s body is discovered in a local river with a huge shotgun blast in his chest on Memorial Day 1958, there’s certainly no shortage of suspects. Sheriff Brody Dean is sorely tempted to write the whole thing off as a hunting accident, but fate intervenes. Local gossip soon coalesces into one persistent rumor, that Quinn’s Dakota Sioux farmhand, Noah Bluestone, is the man responsible for his death. A town pariah for both his own status as a Native American and for his interracial marriage to a young Japanese woman, Bluestone being guilty makes for a tidy narrative. It absolves the town’s white citizens of complicity and also justifies their low opinion of Native Americans in general and Noah Bluestone in particular.
Krueger expands the story of this murder out to the entire town, as we get scenes from Sheriff Dern’s complicated personal life and those of his fellow citizens. Dern is caught between a potentially scandalous love affair and a possible new relationship with a local diner owner named Angie. Angie herself has a past she has kept carefully buried from everyone, especially her teenage son Scotty. Scotty is dealing with the limitations placed on him by a faulty heart inherited from his father, as well as a troublesome friendship with his buddy Del, a very troubled boy. Del’s mother is married to a violent drunk Del hates, and who in turn seems to hate everyone in town.
That’s just a few of the many characters in this expansive, possibly over-stuffed novel. Krueger is not solely, or even primarily focused on the identity of the murderer, but prefers to develop the novel as a panoramic look at small-town life. Though it’s nice to get a sense of the characters’ inner lives and relationships, there are times where it makes the story feel padded out and bloated. It often feels like Krueger is trying to do too many things in one book, especially with flashbacks to Sheriff Dern’s war service and a rather lengthy digression into the history of Native American treatment’s in Minnesota. While these things do provide context, they do affect the pacing the novel in an unfavorable direction.
Overall, though, this is a strong novel with a compelling central mystery and an exciting conclusion. Krueger’s development of a wide cast of characters pays immense dividends as many of them converge in final outburst of fury and danger. This is the first novel I’ve read of Krueger’s, but I feel fairly confident it will not be the last.
