Stars that Rise over The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger

A good crime novel needs lots of good characters. Victims, witnesses, suspects, detective sidekicks, all have their function. If they're well-drawn, we feel sympathy or antipathy, maybe amusement, as the story moves forward. So it is in William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember, except that his characters matter apart from their relationship to the crime.

There's Jimmy Quinn, wealthiest man in the county and most hated. He's already food for catfish in the Alabaster River when the novel begins, but we get to know him by how he bent his family's lives to his. There's also Jack Creasy, a man like used motor oil: "If you tried to get a grip on him, he slipped through your fingers, leaving you with the feel of grit and dirt and a desire to wash yourself clean" (214). Creasy whips up the town with his theory that Quinn's killer was Noah Bluestone, because Quinn recently fired him, and because Bluestone is "an uppity Indian."

Bluestone is admirable and fascinating. He lives away from town with Kyoko, the wife he brought home from the war in Japan. Before the war, he had played football with many of the other characters, including Sheriff Brody. He admits to a confrontation with Quinn just before the murder took place. "He was a big man," Noah tells Brody, "but he had a small spirit. He fired me instead" (95). We wonder why Bluestone won't say a word in his own defense, even when Sheriff Brody Dern arrests him for circumstantial evidence.

Brody lives with his dog Hector in quarters above the jail, where a print of Hopper's Night Hawks is his only decoration. Though the investigation takes Brody to dark places, there's a romantic comedy current to his story: while he continues to see his first love, married to his brother, he's growing to appreciate Angie Madison, proprietor of the diner next door. Around her, he's shy as a middle-school boy.

Angie's 14-year-old son Scott is an especially appealing character. He delivers meals to the jail for Brody and anyone in the jail. Born with a hole in his heart, Scott can't be as active as he would like to be. Scott has no father -- his mother's back-story makes an engrossing novelette-within-the-novel -- but in Brody, Scott finds a surrogate. If he can understand Brody, he thinks "maybe, even with a hole in his heart, he might feel like he was finally a man complete" (192).

All the currents of the story run through a a scene in the jail. Bluestone is being held for murder. His accuser Creasy is there, jailed for disorderly conduct. It's a week after Scott risked his own life to rescue a girl drowning in rapids of the Alabaster River. Now he has brought dinner to the jail. At Bluestone's request, Scott has also brought a branch from a cottonwood tree. Bluestone asks for the branch, then asks Sheriff Brody for a sharp knife.

Brody considered the request, the man who’d made it, and the boy. He said, “Step away from the cell, Scott.”

The boy took a step back. Brody reached into his pocket and brought out a folded barlow knife. He handed it to Bluestone through the bars. Creasy gave a snort of disbelief but said nothing. Bluestone drew out the blade and carefully cut the thin cottonwood branch in two. He folded the blade and handed the knife back to Brody.

“Take a look at this,” Bluestone said. He turned the cut end of the branch toward the boy. “See the star?”

There it was, inside the branch, dead center. A dark, five-pointed star. Brody could see it, too.

Scott’s eyes grew large with wonder.

Bluestone says that his people say that stars are born in earth, are absorbed into the roots of the cottonwood, and are all waiting for the time when the Great Spirit will release them by wind that shakes the branches.

"They fly up and settle in the heavens, where they shine and sparkle and become the luminous creations they were always meant to be.” Bluestone looked seriously at the boy. “Do you know why I wanted to tell you this story?”

Scott said, “No.”

“When you saved that girl, I told you that you’d received a gift. The gift is like this star at the center of the cottonwood. It’s inside you now. Someday, when you need it, it will come out, like the stars when the wind shakes the cottonwood trees, and it will shine for you, well and truly.”

The boy seemed to think about that.

“What a load of horseshit,” Creasy said.

The story moves on to an action-packed conclusion. Before it's over, Scott has had cause to be ashamed of himself, and an opportunity for redemption. All the characters' stories have their own finish apart from the denoument of the mystery.

Links to all of my responses to William Kent Krueger's novels, including his Cork O'Connor series, are listed with short descriptions at my Crime Fiction page.