Medicine River by Mary Annette Pember

 

First Line: My mother's migraines hold me prisoner for much of my childhood.

Recently, I have immersed myself in the history of Indian boarding schools fictionally, historically, and physically. I often pass the site of the Phoenix Indian School, and my visit to the internationally acclaimed Heard Museum included much time spent in the excellent (and sobering) exhibit Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories. That time brought to life many things I've read, including Mary Annette Pember's Medicine River. 

Pember's exhaustive research began as a way to understand her mother's behavior as well as her grandmother's. Both women were sent to Indian boarding schools, and Mary's mother in particular was indelibly scarred from her experience.

Indian boarding schools were the U.S. government's attempt to assimilate all Native Americans-- to make them think and behave like whites. The boarding schools were rife with disease, and those in charge sent sick children back to the reservation to infect and kill many others. To add insult to injury, these children were forced into schools that Native Americans were forced to pay for. They literally funded their own abuse.

Pember shines light on so many topics. Legislation affecting Native Americans over the years. Famous Native Americans who were products of those boarding schools. Insights into her own Ojibwe culture. The homegrown historians (mostly women, both Indian and white) who are documenting and preserving America's Indian boarding school history. This book is a gold mine of illuminating facts that also helped the author shed light on her personal history.

One of the things I found most interesting was the study of epigenetics-- that humans can pass along more than DNA in our genes, that genes can also carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors. It's an interesting avenue of thought.

Medicine River is an important addition to Native American history. It is a history that we should all know more about.

Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools 

by Mary Annette Pember

eISBN: 9780553387322

Pantheon Books © 2025

eBook, 304 pages

Non-Fiction

Rating: B+

Source: Net Galley

Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

 

First Lines: August 7, 2019. La Crosse, Wisconsin. Jump.

 

Finding the body of a young homeless man takes Sheriff Heidi Kick's mind off the nasty reelection campaign her opponent is waging against her, but the discovery can't take her mind off the deadly heat wave that has her section of remote, rural Wisconsin in its grip, nor is it powerful enough to make her forget all the troubles she's having with her young children. 

As her family problems become known, rumors begin to circulate, but Heidi has more dead bodies to cope with. Only newspaperman Leroy Fanta seems to offer any help. He thinks that her case may be tied to a man who's been writing deranged letters to the editor for years. Fanta's heart and liver may be packing it in, but he sets out one more time to see if he can help find Heidi a lead in her case.

~

I sometimes wonder how on earth Sheriff Heidi Kick can manage to stagger from one disaster to another as fraught as her personal life is. I sometimes wonder how she can think Bad Axe County is such a great place to live with all the sordid crimes that take place and all the out-and-out slimy, unhinged people who live there. I sometimes wonder why I like this series so much when those sordid crimes and unhinged people make me want to jump in a hot shower, stick my fingers in my ears, and singsong LA LA LA LA at the top of my voice. But you see, author John Galligan makes it all work, and I enjoyed Bad Moon Rising every bit as much as I did the first two books in the series.

I think my liking for this series has everything to do with its main character, Sheriff Heidi Kick. She's got the smarts, the intuition, and the determination to get the job done each and every time, and that's saying a lot because of her family. At least in this third book, her husband Harley behaved himself. No, it was her wonderful mother-in-law trying to make her life as miserable as possible this time around, bless her. Believe me, this extra grief is not necessary because I think she's got some of the most contentious children in all of crime fiction. But not contentious in the "let me lock 'em in the basement and throw away the key" way. These poor kids have very real problems that the entire family must decipher and learn to deal with, and it just makes me want to hug them all and pitch in to help.

Galligan's stories are always fast-paced and addictive, and no matter how gross the bad guys are, there's something ultimately satisfying in watching them come to justice. Yep. Once justice is served, I want to send dear mother-in-law on an around-the-world cruise she can't refuse, send Heidi and Harley out for a perfect just-the-two-of-them weekend, and babysit their kids.

Now... when a reader gets that involved with the characters, it has a lot to say about a series, doesn't it? Bring on the fourth book!

 

Bad Moon Rising by John Galligan

eISBN: 9781982166557

Atria Books © 2021

eBook, 334 pages

 

Police Procedural, #3 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A-

Source: Net Galley

Dead Man Dancing by John Galligan

 

First Line: As she watched the shivering band set up to play the farmers market at the corner of Kickapoo and Main, Bad Axe County sheriff Heidi Kick found herself counting days again.

 

Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, is gearing up for Sheriff Heidi Kick's favorite time of year: the Syttende Mai Festival celebrating the area's Scandinavian heritage. It's been a rough time for the sheriff; her husband is extremely vocal about the hours she works, and her seven-year-old daughter, Opie (Ophelia), is being just as vocal about a personal matter that has both parents concerned.

But Sheriff Heidi Kick has just discovered that something is deeply wrong in her county, and no one is more determined than she to make this area a safe place to live. A migrant worker is found savagely beaten, and a beloved member of the local oom-pah band is murdered. As Heidi investigates, she finds a secret world of cage fighting, White Nationalists congregating... for what?... and then she's faced with a choice that no woman would ever want to face.

This is going to be a memorable Syttende Mai Festival, to say the least.

~

In Dead Man Dancing, John Galligan has once again found the perfect mix of characters, setting, story, and action to keep me absorbed from first page to last. These harder-edged Bad Axe County books show how no part of the country is safe from crime-- even rural areas with rugged and remote terrain. In this second book, readers are confronted with White Nationalists and the resulting rhetoric these people like to spout as well as the senseless hate crimes that follow them. 

 

Dead Man Dancing isn't always an easy book to read. White Nationalists can make my blood pressure spike faster than almost anything else, but Galligan's characters and story-telling ability are so good that I had to keep reading to find out how everything would be resolved.

 

Now about these characters... Sheriff Heidi Kick has a new deputy from Texas who's slowly teaching her Spanish. I'm looking forward to seeing more of him in future books. On the surface, Heidi's husband, Harley, seems to be the usual spouse who hates sharing his partner with the demands of law enforcement, but readers get to see him in a different light in this book. He is not a two-dimensional man. Neither are his and Heidi's reactions to the demands of their daughter, Opie, and that's another situation I'm looking forward to seeing move along in the next book. 

 

Even secondary characters have lives of their own in Dead Man Dancing. Some residents show us how some people can live their lives wearing blinders while others show us how-- after being kicked over and over again while they're down-- they can make one bad decision after another. The real question for these people is-- will they always make the wrong choice? 

 

One of my favorite quotes in the book came when Heidi-- almost dead on her feet from exhaustion-- is told by her dispatcher to go home and get some rest. Heidi's response? "You know what happens if I go home? As soon as I get there, right about the time I get this uniform off, you call me." This is just one of the many reasons why I was never cut out for a life in law enforcement, and it was good to see the sheriff spell it out so bluntly and truthfully.

 

There are so many reasons to like this book, and one of them is how skillfully Galligan weaves area history into the narrative. This part of Wisconsin had former slaves move in, and one of them was known for building round barns. Not only was this bit of history fascinating but it added depth to both the story and one of Galligan's characters. 

 

John Galligan's Bad Axe County mysteries may tackle uncomfortable subjects, but his story-telling abilities and the characters he populates the county with will always keep me coming back for more. I've encountered few law enforcement officers as dedicated as Heidi Kick to keeping their jurisdictions safe, and that's just the sort of character I like to read about.

Dead Man Dancing by John Galligan

eISBN: 9781982110758

Atria Books © 2020

eBook, 304 pages

 

Police Procedural, #2 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A

Source: Net Galley

The Lost by Jeffrey B. Burton

 

First Line: The guest stirred the stew of fish, crab, salted pork, okra, and herbs with a silver spoon, pushing the polenta off to the side, saving it for last.

 

When billionaire Kenneth Druckman is assaulted and his wife and daughter kidnapped, Mace Reid and his dogs are called in by the FBI. Reid calls his dogs The Finders. They are HRD (Human Remains Detection)-- cadaver-- dogs, and when one of Reid's dogs finds the body of Druckman's wife, the search for Druckman's little girl intensifies.

 

But... the trail Reid's dog, Vira, found leads straight back to Druckman himself. With the help of Chicago Police Detective Kippy Gimm, Reid and his Finders not only need to locate a little five-year-old girl but to get to the bottom of the entire mystery. 

 

Just what in the world is Druckman up to?

 

~

 

Jeffrey B. Burton's series featuring the irreverent Mace Reid and his fabulous pack of dogs keeps getting better, and I enjoyed every single page of his latest, The Lost.  The fast pace, the twists and turns of the plot, and the wit and humor all combine with the human and canine personalities for an exciting, fun ride.

Dog lovers should really get a kick out of The Lost, as each dog has a distinctive personality and knows exactly how to work Mace. I love how Reid chooses his dogs' names from song titles, too-- for example, Maggie (May), (A Boy Named) Sue, (El)Vira. Yes, Reid's star dog's name is pronounced Vira as in virus, not Vira as in veering off course. I'm vintage enough to know all the songs, so the dogs' names have a tendency to create their own playlist in my head.

There are some interesting bad guys to keep an eye on as well. The super-rich (and super creepy) Audrick Verlinden. He's one of these people who is convinced he's above the law, but I do have to admit that I wouldn't mind eating a meal in that dining room of his. Russian mobster Armen Kuznetsov isn't your typical brutish muscle, it's his companion that you need to keep your eye on. And the more you learn about billionaire Kenneth Druckman, the more you want to take a bath. 

As good as the bad guys are, the folks wearing white hats shine even more brightly. I love Mace and his dogs, but the kidnapped five-year-old Eleanor Scarf Druckman stole my heart. What a star! 

Some readers may scoff at how Burton has a tendency to have Mace pull rabbits out of his hat to get out of tight spots, but what saves these situations for me is two-fold. One, the solution doesn't just appear out of thin air; the author actually plants the seeds much earlier in the book and it's up to the reader to see those seeds for what they are and contemplate how they're going to be useful later on. Two, I love how Mace Reid himself describes these moments: Cheeta riding in on a herd of elephants to save the day. Having watched more than one Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie in my youth, this paints such a vivid picture in my mind that I have to smile.

If you're in the mood for a fast-paced thriller that's a ton of fun to read, by all means, get your hands on a copy of The Lost. There's enough backstory to prevent reader confusion, but don't be surprised if you find yourself looking for the previous books in the series. 

The Lost by Jeffrey B. Burton

eISBN: 9781250808639

Minotaur Books © 2022

eBook, 288 pages

 

Police Procedural, #3 Mace Reid K-9 mystery

Rating: A

Source: Net Galley

The Keepers by Jeffrey B. Burton

 

First Line: I spent the bulk of the call with my eyes shut, thinking I was still asleep and in some kind of lucid dream.

 

"The Finders" is Mason "Mace" Reid's pack of dogs trained to find dead bodies. The star of the pack is Vira (short for Elvira), a golden retriever. Called out from his home on the outskirts of Chicago, what Mace and Vira find in Washington Park at 3 in the morning starts a chain of events that soon has them running for their lives.

 

Mace and Chicago PD officer Kippy Gimm find themselves in a nightmare of treachery and corruption, not knowing whom they can trust on their quest for justice. 

~

Jeffrey Burton's second Mace Reid K-9 mystery is fast-paced and filled with tension and suspense as readers try to outguess Mace and Kippy. Are they asking for help from the right people, or are they walking right into a trap? This aspect of The Keepers certainly kept me turning the pages even though I usually knew when they were headed right for that trap. 

Of course, the biggest draw to this book and series for me is the canine one. The fact that Mace names his dogs after songs is endearing. His dogs are Elvira, Delta Dawn, the rambunctious puppy Billie Joe, Maggie May, and the alpha male named Sue. (Johnny Cash, anyone?) Probably the thing I love most about Mace's relationship with his dogs is that he listens to them. There's another series set in Los Angeles that I'm tiring of even though the stories are really good. Why am I tiring of them? Because every time the man's dog alerts him to danger, the man ignores him (and usually gets beaten up). Idiot! There's none of that stupidity here.

If you're in the mood for engaging, fast-paced stories filled with talented working dogs and the human who trains and works with them, find yourself the two books in this series, The Finders and The Keepers. I'm looking forward to Mace and Vira's next assignment.

 

The Keepers by Jeffrey B. Burton

eISBN: 9781250795861

Minotaur Books © 2021

eBook, 288 pages

 

Police Procedural, #2 Mace Reid K-9 mystery

Rating: A-

Source: Net Galley

Bad Axe County by John Galligan

First Lines: Whistling Straits Golf Course, The American Club, Kohler, WI. Afternoon, July 9, 2004. The clammy hand of state representative Cyrus Johnsrud (R-Portage) has released her elbow and is drifting down her spine, stopping to savor each vertebra through the fabric of her gown.

 

Fifteen years ago, Heidi White was eighteen and the reigning Wisconsin Dairy Queen, dodging groping male hands and delivering her message all across the state. The world was her oyster and she had all sorts of plans... until the night that her parents were murdered. The police claimed it was murder suicide, but Heidi knows better. Unfortunately, no one will listen to her. Then followed some dark years when Heidi was her own worst enemy.

But she's found her calling. After her brilliant closing of a case, the married-with-three-kids Heidi Kick is the interim sheriff-- the first female sheriff in Wisconsin. Now she's trying to do her job while working with the corrupt previous sheriff's cronies whose constant derisive calls of "Dairy Queen" make her grind her teeth.

As a deadly ice storm heads for Bad Axe County, Heidi is on the trail of a missing teenage girl, and Pepper Greengrass's trail leads Heidi to backwoods stag parties, deserted dairy farms, and a salvage yard that has its own long-buried secret. As if her job weren't hard enough, she soon realizes that someone is planting clues for her to find, clues that lead to the local baseball team where her husband is coach and former star player. This new sheriff has a lot of work ahead of her if she's going to separate fact from fiction and find the missing girl in time.

~

I have a weakness for mysteries with strong female lead characters and ones set in areas with which I am not familiar. Bad Axe County was a natural for me to pick up because it has both. "This is the Bad Axe. This is coulees. Where did you grow up?" Heidi asks someone. "Somewhere else," the driver said. "That's why you don't get it." The Bad Axe is a part of Wisconsin that's set apart, that has its own rules, its own problems. Drugs, human trafficking... as Heidi lists all the criminal activities in her county, she wonders why she decided to raise a family there, and you can't blame her. But her ties to the area are strong, and she's committed to making it a safe place for everyone who lives there.

The cast of bad guys is seemingly endless in Bad Axe County, and it's not so much a matter of whodunit but of which-one-dunit. After a few chapters, readers will want to pull up their sleeves, put on their sturdiest butt-kicking boots, and help Heidi clean the place up. But as strong as the mystery is, as strong as the sense of place is, the reason why this book became one of my Best Reads of 2021 is its marvelous cast of characters. I won't even waste any time on the characters readers will love to hate, I'm skipping right on to the list of Good Guys. Heidi Kick is smart, intuitive, and determined. Fortunately, she has two people in the sheriff's office who have her back: Officer Yttri, and the night dispatcher, Denise Halverson. Denise and Heidi have their daily "inoculations," Denise telling Heidi one horrible sexist joke after another, the reason behind it being that, when they are faced with the jokes from the jerks they're forced to work with, those "funnies" will have lost their power to inflict damage.

Then there are the younger members of the cast. Pepper Greengrass, missing and in terrible danger, has had a tough life, and her mantra "Nothing you do can hurt me" has the power to break a reader's heart. As far as I was concerned, Pepper and Heidi shared center stage. Heidi's five-year-old daughter, Ophelia "Opie", is a little gem. Much wiser than her years, she's going to be a force to be reckoned with when she's older. Heidi, Denise, Pepper, and Opie are prime illustrations of Heidi's comment, "Emotion makes us stronger. It's something men don't get."

Heidi cares with all her heart and soul, and after reading Bad Axe County, I'm going to be following her from one book to the next as she does her best to clean up her territory. Come join me.

Bad Axe County by John Galligan

ISBN: 9781982110710

Atria Books © 2019

Paperback, 336 pages

Police Procedural, #1 Bad Axe County mystery

Rating: A+

Source: Purchased from Book Outlet.

The Undertaker's Daughter by Sara Blaedel

First Line: What do you mean you shouldn't have told me?

Although her father deserted her and her mother when Ilka was a child, when the forty-year-old school portrait photographer learns of his death, she is reminded that she's never really come to terms with that long ago rejection. It seems her father left her something in his will, and against her mother's dire warnings, Ilka flies from Copenhagen, Denmark to Racine, Wisconsin to find out what her legacy is. Has her father bequeathed her something that proves he really did love her after all?

Arriving in Racine, Ilka learns that her father left her a funeral home swimming in debt. All she wants to do is to go through her father's things, get the business ready for a quick sale, and go home. But then she stumbles into an unsolved murder and a killer who seems to be very much on scene, and her plans begin to change.

I hadn't read very many pages of The Undertaker's Daughter before I began forming an intense dislike for Ilka, the main character. She must be a prime case of arrested development: her mother knows Ilka's father better than Ilka ever will, but she hares off to Wisconsin like a bratty teenager because her mother couldn't possibly know anything. She's full of plans on what she's going to do once she gets there, but what does she actually do? Locks herself in her room, ignoring everyone all the next day, and when the person on the other side of the door finally gives up and shoves papers underneath, does she read them? Heavens no. She just signs them and shoves them back. Big mistake for the forty-year-old teenager.

She can't make up her mind what she's going to do. Is she going to go back to Copenhagen? Is she going to stay? Is she going to sell the business? Is she going to run it herself? I think the final straw for me was when she had a complete mess on her hands yet showed more interest in a date with someone she hooked up with on Tinder. My list of things that annoyed me about Ilka could go on for a day or two.

With my strong adverse reaction to the main character, you'd think I wouldn't have enough of my brain cells left to pay attention to the mystery. The mystery surrounding the cold case and the corpse in the cooler would have been far more engaging if the book hadn't been mired in page after page centering on the whiny Ilka. This is the start of a new series and ends on a cliffhanger. I don't think I need to tell you whether or not I'll continue with it. If you give The Undertaker's Daughter a try, I certainly hope you get much better mileage.
  

The Undertaker's Daughter by Sara Blaedel
Translated from the Danish by Mark Kline.

ISBN: 9781455541119

Grand Central Publishing © 2018

Hardcover, 336 pages

Thriller/Suspense, #1 Undertaker mystery

Rating: D

Source: Amazon Vine 

The Light Keeper's Legacy by Kathleen Ernst

First Line: "This trip of yours is a very bad idea," Roelke said soberly.

It's 1982, and against her boyfriend Roelke McKenna's better judgment, Chloe Ellefson loads her Pinto (including the copy of A Is for Alibi that Roelke gave her) and heads for Rock Island State Park off the coast of Wisconsin in Lake Michigan. Her expertise as a collections curator is needed by the folks who want to bring Pottawatomie Lighthouse back to life for all its visitors.

It's good that she's needed elsewhere because Chloe is stressed out, both at work with a boss who drives her crazy, and at home with a boyfriend who wants a commitment that she's not sure she's ready to give.

When the ferry lands at Rock Island and Chloe makes the trek to the lighthouse, she finds it in the midst of being restored-- ladders and paint buckets lying around, no water, and no electricity. She doesn't mind at all, and dives into the history of the place. But when she finds a young woman's body washed up on the beach, everything starts to change. At first thinking that the girl's death is an accidental drowning, Chloe keeps digging into the lighthouse's history, finding two tough, independent women that fire her imagination. Then another body is found. Has local tension over tighter fishing regulations reached flash point? If Chloe's not careful, she could find herself trapped on the island with a killer.

I've been interested in the history of the Great Lakes ever since I heard Gordon Lightfoot sing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" back in 1976. I've loved lighthouses even longer than that, so when I learned that the action of this book would take place at a Great Lakes lighthouse, I knew I had to read it. I'm glad I did.

Kathleen Ernst does an excellent job of blending the history of the area, of the lighthouse and its keepers, and of ever-changing fishing regluations that have fueled controversy for well over a century. Her setting of a lighthouse on a small remote island adds just the right touch of atmosphere.

She alternates the story of Chloe in 1982 with the stories of a female assistant light keeper and a Scandinavian woman who first came to Rock Island in the 1860s-- and each story, each time frame, is equally intriguing. In fact, I was so interested in the lives of the two earlier women that--even though I enjoyed seeing a collections curator at work and I wanted to figure out who was committing the murders-- I forgot to pay close enough attention to the modern storyline and missed several important clues.

If you're in the mood for atmosphere, history, remote islands, lighthouses and a strong, independent woman experiencing it all, get a copy of The Light Keeper's Legacy. Yes, it's the third book in the series, but you won't be confused, and you may even do what I did: start looking for the other books in the series.

The Light Keeper's Legacy by Kathleen Ernst

ISBN: 9780738733074

Midnight Ink © 2012

Paperback, 345 pages

Cozy Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, #3 Chloe Ellefson mystery

Rating: B

Source: NetGalley