Book Life Review: The River We Remember, by William Kent Krueger
1958, Minnesota, post-war, Native American hostilities, Japanese American, small town, mysterious death, family secrets, small town detective, PTSC, war veterans
Author of the prior novels, Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger further refines his prodigious talent and delivers a delicious and substantial novel about small towns, universal wounds and our ability to heal, in The River We Remember.
Set in a small town in Minnesota in 1958, the novel is peopled with richly drawn characters who arise from its pages wholly formed and sparely but fully realized. A prominent citizen of town, a wealthy and not well-loved landowner, is found dead floating in the river that runs through the town, bearing a fatal gun-shot wound. The town’s sheriff, Brody Dern, is the chief investigator, and carries his own traumatic psychic wounds from his service in World War II. The the town’s diner owner, Angie, her son Scott and his friend Del, the retired part-time assistant sherriff, Connie, the dead man’s less than aggrieved widow, Marta, Noah Bluestone, the suspect in chief, a Dakota Indian, and his Japanese war bride, Kyoko, and Charlie the retired, single attorney who defends the defenseless and oppressed, fill the pages of this beautifully written portrait of mid-Century America. Early in the novel, Brody takes a surprising action to obscure evidence in a perhaps misguided but well-intentioned effort to protect the suspect-in-chief, the town’s sole Native American, Noah Bluestone.
As the investigation proceeds, Krueger unfolds the several backstories of the books key characters, and acquaints the reader with the wide range of histories, tragedies, wounds and grievances that have landed each of them in, or returned them to, Jewel, Minnesota. Krueger’s storytelling is unrushed; the pace of the novel and its’ farmtown setting harkens to an earlier era in mid-Centry America, the earliest days of television, and before cell phones and computers. The combination of the period and setting with Kruegers pacing, creates a novel in which the reader becomes deeply attached to the flawed and oh-so-human inhabitants of Jewel, and fully invested in the outcome of the investigation. Along the way, Krueger delivers delightfully engaging and complex B stories—young, fatherless Scott’s coming of age and his sweet friendship with the unruly Del, war widow Angie’s painful past and longing for a new love, Marta’s secret past, Noah’s stoic defense of those he loves, and Sheriff Brody’s clandestine forbidden affair and his crippling post-war nightmares and guilt.
There is a well-deserved buzz about The River We Remember, as discussions about annual book awards and literary prizes swirl. The novel is one that is enjoyable to read, rewarding to finish, and lingers long after the back cover is closed.