Fox Creek

The nineteenth installment in the Cork O'Connor mystery series opens with Henry Meloux, an Ojibwe Mide, or healer in the Grand Medicine Society, an Ojibwe spiritual tradition. More than a hundred years old, he wanders the forests near the Iron Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, sensing a dark calling he cannot understand. He feels death approaching, not for himself but for others, and wonders whether he stands between death and those he loves or leads death to them.

In Aurora, Minnesota, a stranger arrives at Sam's Place, a burger joint owned by Cork O'Connor. The man claims to be Lou Morriseau and says his wife, Dolores, has run off to the area, infatuated with Henry Meloux. Cork is skeptical: The visitor is blond and soft-bodied, clearly not the three-quarters Ojibwe attorney Dolores married. Still, Cork agrees to investigate, partly to protect Henry. He leaves Sam's Place in the care of his eldest daughter, Jenny O'Connor, and her young son, Waaboo, then hikes through the Superior National Forest to Meloux's cabin at Crow Point.

Cork finds Dolores with Henry and Rainy Bisonette, Cork's wife and Henry's great-niece. Dolores came seeking spiritual guidance about her troubled marriage. When Cork shows her a photo of the supposed husband, she declares she has never seen the man. Cork alerts Sheriff Marsha Dross, but when he returns that evening, the cabins are deserted and the ground has been swept clean of footprints. Cork's son Stephen O'Connor and son-in-law Daniel English discover a GPS tracking device under the collar of Cork's jacket. The impostor used it to follow Cork directly to Henry.

The narrative rewinds to that same afternoon. After Cork leaves, Henry senses imminent danger. He directs Rainy and Dolores to pack supplies, blankets, and his medicine bag, takes the Winchester, and leads them across the meadow into the forest, walking separate paths to confuse trackers. From behind a blind of bushes, they watch four armed men in camouflage converge on the cabins from all directions. When one man's gaze settles near their hiding place, Henry whispers that it is time to go.

The perspective of LeLoup, one of the mercenaries, reveals the hunters' side. His name means "the wolf" in French, and he is a skilled tracker recruited by Kimball, his former military commanding officer and the operation's leader. LeLoup reads the tracks and leads the pursuit into the forest but loses Henry's zigzagging trail at an expanse of bare rock called the Hungry Hills.

The next morning, Cork and Anton Morriseau, Dolores's brother-in-law and a Leech Lake Tribal Police officer, set out from Crow Point with rifles, following the mercenaries' trail north toward the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness along the Canadian border. Cork tasks Stephen with finding the real Lou Morriseau.

Deep in the wilderness, Henry fashions a sharpened stake and conceals it beside a fallen tamarack as a booby trap. The stake pierces the foot of one of the mercenaries, slowing the pursuers drastically. Kimball presses on with LeLoup while Cork and Anton capture the injured man. Snow begins to fall, covering all tracks. Henry leads the women to shelter in a deadfall of toppled trees. That night, LeLoup snatches Kimball's satellite phone and destroys it, severing the mercenaries' link to outside support.

Stephen drives to the Leech Lake Reservation and meets Lou's family, including his sister, Belle Morriseau, who has just completed her third year of law school. Belle accompanies Stephen to Lou's house in Edina, where they find the alarm disabled and Lou's office ransacked. In Dolores's collected mail, Stephen finds an envelope from Canada containing a map covered in black lines, a thumb drive, and the message KILLCATIE 5110. Two men claiming to be Canadian intelligence officers visit and react sharply when Stephen mentions "Catie," suggesting it may not be a person at all. When operatives converge on the house, Stephen and Belle flee north.

In the wilderness, Dolores sprains her ankle, and Henry makes a wrenching decision. He gives his clothing to Dolores and tells the women to head south while he stays behind. At a small lake, LeLoup and Kimball find Henry lying by a fire, seemingly dead. The old man opens his eyes and tells LeLoup he stayed for him, that he recognized a kindred spirit in his dreams. When Kimball tries to kill Henry, LeLoup stops him and declares the old man will not be harmed. Kimball departs after the women; LeLoup stays.

Rainy sends Dolores ahead and positions herself with the Winchester to ambush whoever follows. She shoots Kimball in the thigh, wounding him badly. Dolores reaches the reservation search party safely. Rainy turns north and tracks Henry and LeLoup to a cliff overlooking a pristine lake Henry calls Bizaanide'e, meaning a place to make peace with the heart. Henry introduces LeLoup to mino-bimaadiziwin, the way of the good life. Through ceremony and vision, LeLoup battles a monstrous creature and learns his true name: Prophet. He wakes transformed and departs to set things right.

Cork, injured from a fall, follows the southern trail, exchanges gunfire with Kimball, and eventually reunites with Rainy and Henry. After they are extracted from the wilderness, Cork heads to Bena while Rainy stays in Aurora. Kimball and another operative break into Cork's house to interrogate her, but Prophet intervenes and shoots one of the men; Kimball escapes. Prophet warns Rainy that Cork will be tracked, and she calls him with an urgent message.

Cork, Anton, Stephen, and Belle connect with Tanya Baptiste, who claims to be working with Lou against a secret conspiracy. They cross into Canada via an unofficial back road and find Lou at a hunting cabin on the Shoal Lake Forty Reserve, delirious with fever from an infected bullet wound. Lou reveals the truth: CATIE stands for Canadian-American Transcontinental International Extension, a scheme to siphon freshwater from dozens of northern Canadian lakes and funnel it across the continent for irrigation, industry, and export. He has been gathering documentary evidence with indigenous women from an organization called Now We Speak. He also reveals that Tanya is actually Tina Beaulieu, a traitor. May tenth is the date of a conference near Banff where the accords will be signed.

When Kimball's forces close in on the cabin, the group flees by boat while Prophet stays behind as a decoy. He is captured, but Edgar Green, the Morriseaus' neighbor on the Shoal Lake Forty Reserve, rallies armed islanders who surround Kimball's operatives, invoking sovereign tribal authority. Prophet is freed. Stephen and Belle escape overland with the thumb drive. Belle and Anton deliver the evidence to Now We Speak. The media ambush the Banff conference, and the governments of Canada and the United States disavow knowledge of CATIE, pledging investigations. Prophet returns to Crow Point and tells Rainy he has come to learn.

For ten days, Cork, Rainy, Stephen, and others keep vigil on Crow Point, waiting for Henry to return. One night, as the fire dies low under a full moon, Rainy lifts her eyes and sees the old man crossing the meadow. Henry says he only wanted to be certain it was not yet his time, and to know that, he had to listen long and deep. He adds wood to the fire, sits among them, and says he is grateful to be alive.