2, Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Square, White Bear Lake 30, Excelsior Bay Books, 36 Water St., Excelsior 24, Totally Criminal Cocktail Hour, The Zephyr Theatre, 601 Main St., Stillwater, presented by Valley Booksellers. Keeping to a tradition Krueger has followed since his first book, he will launch “Fox Creek” at 6 p.m. Most interesting is LeLoup, a complicated character who does something so surprising it feels as though he is going to be appearing in future O’Connor adventures. There is family love here, too, as Cork hugs his little grandson, Waaboo, whose mother is Cork’s daughter Jenny. There is more physical adventure in this book than in some of the previous O’Connor stories, with almost all the action outdoors in the Boundary Waters.Īll the characters are part Ojibwe, including Cork’s son Stephen, who is studying Henry’s spirituality and is being mentored by the old healer. The reader knows mercenaries want Dolores and have no problem killing to get her.Īs usual in Krueger’s novels, the reader can feel the cold as Rainy lights a fire under tree boughs at night in the woods, and smell fresh scent of fir trees. Henry, Rainy and Dolores must have been threatened since they headed into the Boundary Waters, where the old man has roamed all his life.Ĭork has no idea where they went or why. When Cork arrives at Henry’s old cabin in the woods to pick up his wife, nobody is there. Henry lives outside Aurora, the town where Cork lives and was once sheriff. Helping Henry is his great-niece, Rainy, who is married to Cork.

But he is willing to help a white woman, Dolores Morriseau, who is so troubled she hopes Meloux can help heal her emotionally since her husband has vanished and she doesn’t know why.

Henry, who is at least 100, is having visions of his death and he walks the woods to prepare himself. “Fox Creek” by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books).Ĭork O’Connor has to use all his tracking skills to save his wife in “Fox Creek,” William Kent Krueger’s 19th O’Connor thriller, which tells us much about the strength and wisdom of Henry Meloux, the ancient Ojibwe healer who has been Cork’s spiritual adviser and mentor since the series began. Can the old man maintain the pace they’ve kept in order to outrun their pursuers? Will the snow help throw those men off their trail completely? And still at the heart of everything, the questions of who the hell are they and what do they want. Rainy wakes in the thinnest light of dawn and finds that even Henry has not stirred. Huddled together inside the deadfall of tree and limbs, exhausted, Rainy and the others have slept the night through. “Fox Creek’ by William Kent Krueger (Atria Books, $28)

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