Apostle's Cove by William Kent Krueger

 

Yeah, I'm a sucker for Krueger's novels, the way he manages to tell such complex stories about a place he loves and the people he loves who live there; the remarkable honesty about the bad and about how it doesn't outweigh the good. This is one of those, with less family stuff than many of his more recent novels that I've read. There's a prologue of framing, then two parts; the first part is set like twenty-five years ago and lots of the changes wrought over the course of the novels haven't happened yet, which is bittersweet as hell; the second part is the pay off as at least some things that have plausibly been floating around for at least most of the series come home to roost like angry hens, or maybe harpies, or perhaps Furies. Krueger gets these people; they all act and speak as themselves, without notable artifice. The story feels a little rushed toward the end, perhaps, but it is a decent resolution. The spiritual stuff feels likewise unforced, though Henry is going to die eventually (possibly when Krueger does). I figure that if Krueger is your jam, you're probably already reading him, this fits in well with what he's been doing lately.