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This 20th Cork O'Connor book deals with quite a few issues, perhaps a few too many to do full justice to any. Among the topics that play out between its covers are the huge percentage of Indigenous women who go missing each year, the difference in the way police treat missing white women's and Indigenous women's cases, the appropriation of native land by oil and gas companies, the importance of family, and Indigenous spirituality. Likewise, there seems to be no real center to this book but rather characters and events that are used as incompletely rendered plot devices. There's a wedding that brings the O'Connors together for the span of the book, but which gets very little attention once everyone arrives. Annie, Cork's daughter, arrives out of the blue after a long estrangement, hiding a secret that ends up having little bearing on the plot.
Taken as a mystery, the plot has to do with the recent disappearance of several women, both Indigenous and white. Cork O'Connor, a retired sheriff with no official law enforcement role, becomes involved when his grandson Waaboo discovers a grave in a blueberry patch and senses the spirit of the woman who lies within it. From that point on, the boy plays a role in the investigation, providing guidance for the search through his gift of communing with the spirits of the dead. Cork, who knows the legal constraints that law enforcement must adhere to, takes on a lot of investigation that is off limits to the official tribal or local police. To a large extent, the solution to the women's murders would never have been found if it weren't for unorthodox sleuthing, and it felt as though Krueger just pulled another non-official action from a hat when he wanted to give us the next clue.
All of this takes place as an overlay to a conflict between the Ojibwe people whose land is being destroyed to build a pipeline and the economic interests of those hired to build that pipeline. Krueger makes his point about the politics involved, but he doesn't fully flesh out the people involved and doesn't provide the sense of location that earmarked his earlier books. I missed the captivating language with which he described the natural beauty of the Canadian/US borderland in his earlier books. I also missed the depth of characterization his previous work has been notable for. At the beginning of the book, he gives us a quick verbal family tree, and that isn't much expanded upon as the book continues. It's hard to keep track of the characters, not necessarily because there are so many, but because they are not well developed enough to emerge as real people.
One thing I did quite like was the double-entendre of the book title. Spirit Crossing is the name of the location where the pipeline conflict takes place, and it also refers to the spirit of the dead woman who speaks to Waaboo as she tries to find the path to cross into the next world.
SPIRIT CROSSING is not the best book in this series. Krueger's writing in earlier books is much stronger than in this. I would definitely not recommend starting the series with this book; instead, go back to IRON LAKE and see how it all began while enjoying an amazing writer. I am hoping that this 20th series offering is an anomaly and not a sign that Krueger is losing interest in Cork O'Connor. Perhaps the 21st book will make that clear.
§ Sharon Mensing, retired educational leader, lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors in Arizona.
Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, August 2024
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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