Lightning Strike is the eighteenth Cork O’Connor mystery by William Kent Krueger, but don’t hesitate to pick it up if you haven’t read the other books. The sensitive, moving book is a prequel, set in the summer of 1963 when Cork is twelve. Krueger himself said the book is meant to introduce and draw readers into the series. It worked for me. I’ve read Krueger’s standalone novels, Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land. This book ranks with them as a perceptive coming-of-age novel, a poignant story of a father and son.

The book actually begins in January 1989 when Cork O’Connor is the new sheriff of Tamarack County, Minnesota. His father, Liam O’Connor, had been sheriff there twenty-five years earlier, and Cork feels the responsibility to the people who elected him, and to his father’s reputation. His father gave his life for his job, something that the twelve-year-old boy didn’t understand.

In the summer of 1963, Cork and his friend, Jorge, went on a ten-mile hike, heading to Lightning Strike, the location where a cabin had been hit by lightning and burned. The Ojibwe said the cabin should not have been built on sacred land, and that’s why it was hit by lightning. But, Cork and Jorge faced something even worse when they found the hanging body of Big John Manydeeds. While Cork would never forget the sight of the corpse, a man he admired and respected, it was the enormous shadow, a darkness, that would haunt him.

Big John Manydeeds’ death would haunt Liam O’Connor as well. The first impression, with whiskey bottles around, and at John’s cabin, was that Manydeeds committed suicide. But, the Ojibwe would not accept that verdict. Liam was a white man with an Ojibwe mother-in-law, which made him an outsider to the local white community as well as to the Ojibwe. No one would talk to him, so he struggled to find answers. It was Cork who offered clues as to the truth behind the man’s death.

There’s so much more I could say about this book, however the plot development is part of the depth and beauty of the story. This is the summer Cork struggles. He feels an emptiness, and has questions about death. He has questions his father can’t always answer, and, at times he disagrees with his father’s decisions. Colleen, Cork’s wise mother, understands the struggle to find the truth, a truth that is sometimes in the heart, while Liam O’Connor is a straightforward man who has to have logical answers. In doing so, Liam faces hostility from everyone, even his own son at times.

Kent Krueger’s Lightning Strike is the story that made Cork O’Connor into the man he is in the mystery series. He walks a fine line between his Irish and Ojibwe ancestry, “Always a spirit divided, always trying to figure out how to put those two worlds together.” The summer of 1963 was a turning point in Cork O’Connor’s life. He’ll never be the same, and he rejects his father’s career in law enforcement. However, a wise Ojibwe sees Cork’s future differently, seeing him as “One who stands between evil and his people.”

To understand Cork O’Connor, his relationship with his home and his community, his relationship with his father, his beliefs, his heart, it’s important to read Lightning Strike. This book is the gateway to the Cork O’Connor series.

William Kent Krueger brings us back to the summer of 1963 when his beloved series character Cork O’Connor was 12 years old. This prequel delves into the relationship Cork has with his father Liam O’Connor along with the other major players in his life including his schoolteacher mom Colleen, his full-blood Ojibwe grandmother Dilsey, Liam’s Ojibwe friend Sam Winter Moon, and the population of Aurora, Minnesota.

The action opens when young Cork and his friend hike to a spot known as Lightning Strike where they discover Big John Manydeeds hanging from a tree. Big John had stopped drinking years before yet there were whiskey bottles at his feet and in his home. Was this really the suicide the white folks so easily assumed, or could it have been murder? Liam O’Connor is sheriff, and he must follow the clues left behind, a task made more difficult by the prevalent attitudes between white and Indian. Cork accompanies his father to visit Mide medicine man Henry Meloux who tells him to follow the crumbs, so Cork begins looking at the same clues, sometimes with his father. They find a lighter that belonged to Duncan MacDermid, the rich owner of a mine, who has turned to drinking the same brand of whiskey found at Big John’s home. Belligerent and prejudiced, MacDermott wants nothing to do with Indians yet more and more Liam suspects him.

Liam’s discovery process is inhibited by white man’s law in Aurora. He keeps everything legal yet is hindered at every turn by assumptions and prejudice. At home, Liam finds another stumbling block in his mother-in-law Dilsey who seems to represent all Ojibwe and their attitudes against the white man. Liam is stuck in the middle and must listen to each side. Cork is by his side and he feels the pressure, too, from his young friends. When Cork’s friend Billy Downwind and his mother return for Big John’s funeral, they share that the job the government had promised his father in Los Angeles under the Indian relocation act wasn’t there, and they were miserable.

Circumstances change Liam’s focus to the case of a young Ojibwe girl who had run away from a nearby town; her body was found in the Boundary Waters and had been there since about the time Big John was killed. And then the toxicology report on Big John came back, and everything changes.

As Liam and Cork pursue the truth, each in their own way, Liam can see that Cork’s innocence is slipping away. Cork’s understanding of the world was beginning to crumble, and there was nothing Liam could do. Cork would always be of two worlds, the white and the Indian, and he would always be trying to fit them together. Sam Winter Moon asks Cork if he knows the Ojibwe word ogichidaa, which means protector and explains to Cork that is what Liam is to his family, to the people he serves. This part touched me most of all because in reading the entire series, adult Cork has come to accept his role as ogichidaa.

The conclusion of Lightning Strike was unexpected, sad, yet deeply satisfying. An excellent read.

Prequel to his Cork O'Connor series, William Kent Krueger has put out another masterful story that is full of rich characters. Strong plot and endearing characters is what the reader expects from Krueger and this is a shining star!

Krueger fans will really like this new book and people who've not read him, but like coming of age stories, should like it as well. A bit of mystery, a lot of boyhood friendship, a good bit of family dynamics, and small town life all entwined with characters and situations tied to racial/cultural interactions and different viewpoints. Not necessarily a happy read but a good one.

This is an amazing read with insights into the characters you have never read before. A journey into the past where Cork O'Connor is introduced as a young child, and his sheriff-father, Liam, takes center stage when Cork and his friend discover a body of a good man at a place spiritually important to the tribe.

Besides the exceptional mystery, this narrative explores the undeniable tensions between the native population and the whites as Liam walks a very narrow line between appeasing everyone involved and having an open mind while hunting down the killer. Distrust, skepticism, dislike and outright racial insults and injustice permeates this story and opens up the heart and eyes of juvenile Cork O'Connor setting him on the path he will follow as a man.

Don't miss this one!

WIlliam Kent Krueger is one of my favorite authors. I had read every one of his books and continually recommend them. Everybody that I have recommended to read has come back to me asking how they did not know about this author.

By far, this has to be one of my favorite books by him. After reading about Cork McConnell for years, this book introduces him as a young man coming of age and the people who are his influencers. One can see how he became the person (and sheriff) that he is. I love the descriptions, the people, etc. I know that I will never get bored with any of his books. Bravo and keep writing Mr. Krueger.