Trickster’s Point [by] William Kent Krueger
New York; ATRIA Books [2012]
978-4516-4567-5; $24.99
Cork O’Connor accompanied his boyhood friend, Jubal Little, on a bowhunt near the monolith called Trickster’s Point. There, Jubal was struck fatally by an arrow which looked suspiciously like one of Cork’s own making. And Cork stayed with Jubal for 3 hours while he bled out and died before going for help. Law enforcement couldn’t understand why, even though Cork explained that Jubal had asked him to remain. Cork didn’t talk about what he and Jubal talked about.
Cork met Jubal when he was back in grade school and Jubal was the new kid in town. Cork sometimes hung out with a sister and brother who were Ojibwe – Winona and Willie Crane. Willie, who suffered from cerebral palsy, was an easy target for one of Aurora’s bullies, Donner Bigby. That all changed the day Jubal arrived and beat up Donner.
Jubal was a larger-than-life kind of guy, even as a kid, and he captured the admiration of Cork O’Connor, the gratitude of Willie Crane, and the heart of Winona. Since then, his fame grew. He became a football player. He married Camilla Jaeger and her family groomed him as a political candidate. He was running for governor of Minnesota when he died. His candidacy held within it the seeds of both health and destruction for the people of Tamarack County. The other kids had changes in their lives, too.
Sam Winter Moon, who had been a good friend of Cork’s father, taught Winona, Jubal, and Cork how to bowhunt. In fact, when Sam died, Cork made his arrows with the same fletching pattern as Sam’s. Cork also went off to become a cop in Chicago and he married, too.
Henry Meloux, another friend of Cork’s family, an old shaman, saw Jubal and Winona as two halves of the same brokenness, and he encouraged them to heal each other, even encouraging their relationship after Jubal married. Winona had had a vision that Jubal would go high upon a mountaintop, becoming an important man, and that he must do it alone, but that she was to help him to make it there.
Willie proceeded to make a brilliant name for himself as a nature photographer. He learned to compensate for the clumsiness caused by his CP, and his pictures captured the pure essence – the soul, perhaps – of his subjects. He and Winona created the Iron Lake Center for Native Art in Alouette, and Willie’s photos had a big place there. Willie had also made a place for his equally awkward friend, Isaiah Broome, whom he had once saved from drowning, and then helped groom into a fine chainsaw artist.
In a later childhood incident, the bully Donner Bigby fell off the top of Trickster’s Point. Jubal had climbed up there and looked down from the top as Cork looked up from below when Donner fell. Cork strongly believed that Jubal had pushed him, but he never knew for sure.
An unknown man is found not far from the Point the day after the death of Jubal. He seems to be a hunter, for he had good quality, but well-worn, equipment. He’d been shot through the eye with an arrow similar to Cork’s. The stranger is carrying a hunting rifle, and he looks to have been aiming it at where Cork and Jubal were when Jubal died.
How does this man fit in? Who actually killed Jubal? Cork really wants to know, as his computers, guns and bows, and other so-called evidence is paraded from his home in the hands of cops who are his friends. There are so many possibilities – some of them unthinkable. Cork only knows that the reasons go back a long way into the history shared by the Cranes, Bigbys, Isaiah Broom, Cork, and Jubal. But as he searches for answers, he is threatened by a bullet blowing through his windshield and lodging in his car seat, an arrow hitting the door of his paramour’s cabin, and a threat to him and his family if he ever mentions the name Rhiannon in public. This is a name which appeared in his last conversation with Jubal, but he doesn’t know what it means.
Kent Krueger’s writing just gets better and better in this series which really delivers. He gets to the centers of personalities in few words, and then just expands them into fully-realized people that you really do care about. The lives of these characters are full and full of spiritual content. The place they live, with its secrets and its legends, is a character in the books as well, shaping the people and their lives. This is an awesome book. Very highly recommended.~ lss-r
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My book.
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