God's Country

Book : Cork O'Connor Mystery Series

by William Kent Krueger

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember, a new mystery in the wildly popular Cork O’Connor series.

Cork O’Connor, preparing for a family trip into the Boundary Waters, is troubled by ominous visions about his future. Ignoring the warnings, he uncovers signs of violence while searching for his missing friend, Cordell Bishop. Soon, he is forced to negotiate with dangerous criminals, the Kennedy brothers, who are seeking their late father’s hidden stash.

Facing escalating danger and difficult choices, Cork grapples with his darkest instincts as he helps others escape and eventually takes justice into his own hands. God’s Country is an action-packed thrill ride that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Release date: August 18, 2026

Publisher: Atria Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
I often wonder about the plan of the Creator. I’ve seen enough cruelty in this world to understand why some people don’t believe in the Great Spirit. Life is just what it is, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and there’s no rhyme or reason, no unseen hand pulling strings. Everything is simply luck of the draw. Then I look at the face of my wife, Rainy, or my children, or my grandson, and I see the true heart of the Creator reflected there. But I know that I’m one of the lucky ones. Not everyone, as you will see, is so blessed.

Cork O’Connor is my name. I live in Aurora, Minnesota, a small town at the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a million acres of pristine forest, lakes, and fast-running streams and rivers. Across the border in Canada is the Quetico, another million acres of the same. People call this God’s country. It’s a spiritual place, absolutely. But sometimes things happen here that seem to run contrary to the nature of the Divine. The event I’m about to relate is one of those things.

It all began on a Saturday with a vision. Two really, neither of them mine. I’m not much gifted in that way. But my son, Stephen, and my grandson, Waaboo, have been given this ability, which they don’t necessarily view as a gift because what they see is usually a forecast of something dark and dangerous.

Waaboo came down to breakfast that morning looking troubled, his black hair tousled from a restless sleep. He was not quite eight years old. He plopped himself down in the chair between his parents. He sat mute, his chestnut-colored eyes staring at the scrambled eggs and toast and mixed fruit Rainy and I had prepared for everyone. The rest of us—Waaboo’s dad, Daniel; his mother, Jenny, who is my daughter; Rainy; and me—had only just seated ourselves at the breakfast table in the kitchen, and I greeted him with “Boozhoo, Noozhishenh,” which is Ojibwe for “Hello, Grandson.”

He took a moment to respond, as if still coming out of his night’s dreaming.

“Boozhoo, Baa-baa,” which is what he’s called me ever since he was a very small child and couldn’t pronounce “Grandpa.” His voice seemed raw, his words croaked more than spoken.

“Are you okay? You don’t look well.” Jenny felt her son’s forehead.

“Not sick,” he said, pulling away from her hand. “I had a bad dream. I saw a wolf in a forest.”

“We’re Wolf Clan,” I said. “That should be a good thing.”

Waaboo shook his head. “There was something wrong with this wolf. He wasn’t a good wolf. He was like a monster wolf.”

“What was he doing?” Jenny asked.

“There was a man on the ground and the wolf had torn his chest open with his teeth and claws and he was eating the man’s heart.”

Now Daniel seemed almost as troubled as his son. “Did you know the man?”

Waaboo nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Who was it?” Daniel asked.

Waaboo looked my way. His little face scrunched up as if this monster wolf was right there between us. “It was you, Baa-baa,” he said, his small voice nearly cracking. “It was your heart the wolf was eating.”

“He sees things, I know,” Daniel said. “But sometimes dreams are just dreams. We all have bad dreams on occasion.”

“Waaboo’s dreams are different,” Jenny said in a stone-cold voice.

The little guy was no longer at the table. He’d said he didn’t feel like eating and was going back upstairs to his room for a while. Jenny offered to go with him, but he said he wanted to be alone. Sometimes, after he’s had one of his visions, he does this so that he can process the difficult revelation. Occasionally, he needs help doing that, and when that happens, we take him to see Henry Meloux.

Rainy had been quiet through much of the conversation. Now she gazed at me with a clinical look in her eye. She was trained as a public health nurse. She’s also a member of the Grand Medicine Society, so an Ojibwe healer. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Right as rain,” I said.

“Still, the vision may be about your health.”

“If it is a vision,” Daniel said. He’s a cop, an officer with the Iron Lake Tribal Police. The nature of his job causes him to look at the world in a more concrete way. I get this. I was a cop for years, and the realities of what you deal with in that job tend to shape your thinking along more solid lines.

“Take your badge off,” Jenny said, “and think like an Anishinaabe poet.”

Which Daniel is. Published and with awards. He also plays the accordion. So, probably not your normal law enforcement officer.

“Waaboo’s clearly upset,” she went on. She looked at me in much the same way Rainy had. Clinically. “Don’t dismiss what he’s seen as a bad dream, Dad. When was the last time you had a checkup?”

Age sixty is in my rearview mirror now, but when I was a much younger man, I ran the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, twice. I wasn’t among the front runners, but I finished in the middle of the pack. I still run fairly regularly and bike and canoe and play basketball with a bunch of guys like me. We call ourselves the Old Martyrs. So I think of myself as being in pretty fair shape, and I told my daughter this.

“You didn’t answer my question. When was your last checkup?”

“I don’t remember. A year ago, maybe.”

“You saw a doctor when you got beat up at Sam’s Place last fall,” Rainy said.

I’m a private investigator and I was working on a murder case, actually a cold case that I’d first investigated when I was sheriff of Tamarack County twenty-five years earlier. I’d ruffled feathers during that second investigation and got bruised ribs and a slight concussion for my efforts. I’d been seen in the emergency room and sent home with ibuprofen.

“I’m sure he didn’t check your heart very carefully,” Rainy added. “He was more interested in your head.”

“Which is pretty hard,” I reminded her, giving my noggin a little thump with my knuckles. “No lasting ill effects.”

“You’re about to head into the Boundary Waters for several days. No clinics around the corner there,” Rainy said. “Please, see a doctor.”

“See a doctor,” Jenny said.

I glanced at Daniel, who gave a shrug, signaling defeat. “See a doctor,” he said.