Lightning Strike

Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger

 

I like reading prequels especially when, in your own time, you come to wonder about what came before.

Lightning Strike  is a Cork O'Connor  story that takes us back to his adolescent years when Cork's father is tasked with finding the reason Big John Manydeeds is found hanging from a tree at Lightning Strike, a sacred place to the Ojibwe on Iron Lake.   People who want to dismiss any death of a Native American say it was suicide but it just doesn't make sense to the people who know him both on and off the reservation. Why was his blood alcohol level off the charts when he didn't drink anymore?  How did he get up that tree by himself? These are questions the people want but don't trust Liam O'Connor to find the answers to.

Cork's got a pretty good life for a small town boy in early 1960's Aurora, Minnesota.  Freedom to roam morning to night, a couple of paper routes to give him some money, two best friends,  parents who are respected, though his father Liam has to work hard for respect because he is Irish and married in.  Because Cork has the freedom to move around the lakes and area on his bike and canoe and because his mother and grandmother belong to the tribe, he has the respect of the elders in the tribe and the town.   This freedom makes him able to listen to the talk. He hears conversations his dad doesn't.  He sees things and makes connections and seeks the wisdom of tribal elders.  

Cork doesn't solve the mystery of Big John's death but he IS instrumental in gathering the information his father needs to put it all together.  He isn't a cocky little kid, he isn't perfect but he is smart and his parents understand him.  I had to think back to that time and remember what a child's freedom to roam meant.  

Eventually, after false starts and stops the pieces begin to come together and Big John's death is explained.  And we come to know how Cork O'Connor came to be Cork O'Connor.  

If you are a fan of Cork O'Connor and author Kreuger you won't be sorry you spent some time in the 1960's with this young man.