Book description
Autumn in Michigan's Upper Peninsula means hunting season, and the fall
of 1950 finds most everyone in St. Adele township hunting for
something-deer, grouse, uranium; love, redemption, escape; a story, a
husband, a murderer. When the son of summer residents at the exclusive
Shawanok Club is found dead after an uproarious dance at the town hall,
the sheriff is flummoxed, and everyone is appalled: Bambi was found in
the loft over the tool shed, bound, gagged, and inexpertly scalped. Who
better to search for the killer than St. Adele's reluctant constable,
John McIntire? The trail he must follow branches off like the spokes of
a wheel, leading to multiple dead ends. The only common link seems to be
the boy's parents: a father who is mysteriously unavailable, a mother,
on a mission to see her son's killer dead, who remains sequestered in
her rented mansion, baking cream pies and playing the piano. Her
imported private eye seems more interested in dallying with McIntire's
exotic Aunt Siobhan, who's turned up on his doorstep some 25 years after
she ran off with a carnival worker as a teen. And Bambi's mentor on a
summer's search for uranium, a hot prospect in Flambeau County, is more
conversant with archaeological artifacts than Geiger counters.
McIntire's investigation takes him from the haunts of the affluent
visitors, to the backwoods camp of a Rube Goldberg hermit, and finally
to an abandoned gold mine where he learns what really happened that
autumn night.... The deliberate pace of Hills's sophomore effort, set
in heavily rural Upper Michigan in the 1950s (after 2002's Past
Imperfect), succeeds perfectly in capturing the complex relationships
between insiders and outsiders and the obligations of family and
friendship. An argument at a local dance between a rich kid and an
Indian youth is prelude to a bizarre murder that sucks Constable John
McIntire away from his pleasurable pastime of translating Selma
Lagerlf's The Story of Gsta Berling from Swedish to English. By rights
McIntire's role is secondary to that of the state police and Sheriff
Pete Koski. But McIntire, prodded by conscience and curiosity, worries
the investigation along like a bloodhound. Like an art restorer who
uncovers a masterpiece hidden under a later, poorer painting, Hills
lovingly clears away the grime and accretions to reveal stunning
portraits of the residents of St. Adele, be they native, prodigal or
temporary. Glimpses of individual portraits tantalize: the wife
desperate to save her heavy-drinking husband; the bereaved mother
compulsively baking; the private investigator seemingly more intent on
finding uranium than a killer; the ancient recluse living rough and
zealously guarding his privacy. But only when the restoration is
complete can the viewer (or reader) appreciate the brilliance of the
artist's vision. Hills's quiet asterpiece, including its shocking
ending, lingers in the mind's eye long after the book is finished.
Kathleen Hills spent the first forty years of her life in rural
Minnesota before leaving for the real world and a career in speech and
language pathology. After determining that ten years in the real world
should be all that is demanded of anyone, she turned to writing. She is
the author of Past Imperfect, Hunter's Dance, and Witch Cradle,
mysteries set in 1950s Michigan featuring John McIntire, township
constable. Kathleen divides her time between northern Minnesota and
Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
