Book description
The summer of 1919 is over, and on the high prairie, a small army of
men, women, and machines moves across the land, bringing in the wheat
harvest. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindlestiffs, cooks, camp
followers, and hobos join the tide. Prosperous farmers proudly proclaim
“Rain follows the plow,” meaning that the bounty of the land will never
be exhausted. Everywhere, people gleefully embrace the gospels of
progress and greed. The threshing season is on. But there is also an
evil upon the land. A killer who calls himself the Windmill Man believes
he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood. For
him, the moving harvest is a target-rich environment, an endless supply
of ready victims. He has been killing for years now and intends to kill
for many more. Who could stop him? Nobody even knew he existed. Until
now. A young man named Charlie Krueger also follows the harvest. Jilted
by his childhood sweetheart and estranged from his drunkard father, he
hopes to find a new life as a steam engineer. But in a newly harvested
field in the nearly black Dakota night, he has come upon a strange man
digging a grave. And in that moment, he has become the only person who
can stop the evil, if he lives long enough. For the killer knows his
name and his wanderings, and he, too, is now a target. When next they
meet, one of them will have to die. The advent of the threshing
machine, which changed farming by making it easier and more profitable
to harvest wheat, provides the backdrop for Thompson's accomplished
stand-alone, set in 1919 on the Great Plains. As bands of workers and
machines roam from farm to farm, bringing in the crops and ushering in
the era of Big Wheat, Charlie Krueger finds his real home and an
affinity for fixing machinery when he joins such a group. Having left
his family farm and abusive father, Charlie is unaware that back home
he's accused of killing the girlfriend who jilted him and that he's
stalked by her murderer, a serial killer who's been following crop
workers for years. Thompson (Frag Box) mixes elements of the western
with a well-devised mystery plot for an evocative look at the hardships
of farming, the intersection of progress with old-fashioned ways, and
the loneliness of the Great Plains. Richard Thompson is a former civil
engineer and construction manager who traded his hard hat for a laptop
and now writes full time. His first novel, Fiddle Game, was short-listed
for a Debut Dagger award, and Frag Box was a finalist for the 2010
Minnesota Book Award. He is also the author of a standalone historical
mystery, Big Wheat. He lives in Minnesota with his wife of 45 years and
two neurotic cats.
