Purgatory Ridge

This is the 1st Krueger novel I've read (I just found out its the 3rd in a "series") and I was totally captivated by it! The characters are incredibly lifelike, the storyline is well rounded, the plot is riveting, and the emotion is powerful.When I first read the dust cover for a synopsis of the book, I admit I was unimpressed. But after reading only a few pages of the book, I was 100% interested in what was happening within the story (actually turned out to be multiple story lines - all receiving equal and adequate attention).I'm on my way to get the remaining Krueger novels (excellent job, Mr. Krueger!) and I highly recommend this book as a very entertaining read.

This is the third in what discerning readers all over the world must hope will be a long-running series featuring Cork O'Conner, his wife Jo, and his three children, Jenny, Annie and Stevie. While this is a fine mystery, and a terrific adventure, all these elements of the novel are shaped and informed by the changing relationships among this family.These relationships are at the core of author Krueger's interest, and while I feel he still struggles at times with female sensibilities, his "take" on father-daughter contretemps and emotional spread is dead on.Lake Superior is a vast, emotionless, natural wonder. Yet we frequently describe it's many moods in human terms, its raging storms, its implacable irresistible strength, its icy coldness. In the dark foundation of this story, Lake Superior plays a real and important role. Krueger has taken the true story of one man's improbable survival of the sinking of a lake freighter in a November storm, and made it the prime motivator for everything that follows.Some things in life, and in death, appear to be foregone. From the very beginning, when John LaPere loses his beloved younger brother to the great lake, it seems inevitable that LaPere's ancestral sensibilities will one day lead his feet into a path that intersects with those of the O'Connor family, and with others, whites and Indians, who live, work, plot, scheme and murder, in and around the small northwoods community of Aurora.The story begins in high tension, death and destruction and rarely slackens it grip until the final chapter. In Purgatory Ridge you will find all the elements readers have come to expect from this fine writer: a complex plot, a great range of real characters who jump off the pages, descriptive passages that bring scenes so alive one can almost smell the pine woods of Northern Minnesota and hear the waves of the great lake, good dialog, suspense, well-contrived and placed sub-plots, a fired up pace and a careful, surprising ending that perfectly fits what has gone before. Purgatory Ridge is a novel to be savored.

Near Aurora, Minnesota, a major environmental-industrial dispute exists. The Anishinaabe tribe wants the two hundred acres of great white pines that are sacred to them as "Old Grandfathers" protected from the lumber industry. Karl Lindstrom's lumber mill resides on the edge of the forest and he is not known for his conservation methods. As is the case in many local arguments, outsiders come marching in to join the Native American protesting the cutting down of the trees.However, all hell breaks loose when someone blows up the mill, killing a Native American employee. The industrial moguls blame the Anishinaabe tribe and the law agrees even though someone named the Eco-Warrior claims credit for the deed. Though he lost his job as sheriff a couple of years ago, Cork O'Connor, at the pleading of his wife Jo, the tribe attorney, begins to search for the identity of the terrorist. As he conducts the search, the Eco-Warrior adds kidnapping and ransom demands to his crime list.PURGATORY RIDGE is an exciting ecological thriller that keeps the suspense and action at high levels throughout the tale. When the story concentrates on the central theme of conservation vs. development, the plot is as good as it gets. In those circumstances, all the key characters seem genuine in their beliefs. When the story line spins into sidebars like the ransom kidnapping it appears as if a plot device has been used to add unnecessary tension to an already strong novel. Award winning William Kent Kreuger has written a one-sitting tale that will send sub-genre fans off to read the previous O'Connor books (see BOUNDARY WATERS and IRON LAKE).Harriet Klausner