Thunder Bay

The novel opens on a warm August morning in northern Minnesota, where Cork O'Connor, a former two-time sheriff of Tamarack County and newly licensed private investigator, goes fishing on Iron Lake with Wally Schanno, another retired sheriff. Schanno, struggling with loneliness after his wife Arletta's death, asks Cork to call on him if any PI work comes up. Cork promises he will, a commitment he later regrets.

Cork runs Sam's Place, a burger joint on Iron Lake inherited from his late mentor, Sam Winter Moon. His daughters Jenny, eighteen, and Anne, sixteen, help during the busy season. Anne hints that something is wrong with Jenny, whose boyfriend, Sean Pflugleman, a college student home for the summer, is causing trouble. Cork's wife, Jo, an attorney who represents the local Ojibwe tribal community, refuses to discuss the situation over the phone.

George LeDuc, the tribal chairman, brings alarming news: Henry Meloux, a revered Ojibwe Mide (a traditional healer of the Grand Medicine Society) and Cork's longtime spiritual mentor, has collapsed and been hospitalized. Meloux reveals that the weight on his heart is not a medical blockage but a deep sadness: He has a son he has never seen, fathered seventy-three years earlier with a woman named Maria Lima in Ontario, Canada. He asks Cork to find this son and gives him a gold pocket watch containing Maria's photograph. Cork retrieves the watch from Meloux's cabin and brings Meloux's dog, Walleye, home for his eight-year-old son, Stevie, to care for.

Through online research, Cork identifies Henry Wellington, a seventy-two-year-old Canadian industrialist who transformed Northern Mining and Manufacturing (NMM) into a major corporation. Wellington's mother was Maria Lima, and he was born in the right month and year. A Korean War fighter ace often compared to Howard Hughes, Wellington retreated to Manitou Island in Thunder Bay after his wife's death, becoming a notorious recluse. A telling detail connects him to Meloux: As a child, Wellington's favorite possession was a stuffed cormorant given by his mother, and Meloux belongs to the cormorant clan.

Jo reveals that Sean plans to skip college to live in Paris and wants Jenny to join him. Cork is alarmed, but Jo counsels patience. Jenny asserts her independence but agrees to consult her parents before deciding.

Cork drives to Thunder Bay, where he meets Trinky Pollard, a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigator living on her sailboat, and Rupert Wellington, Henry's younger half-brother and current CEO of NMM. Rupert agrees to pass Cork's request to his brother. Wellington arranges a visit to Manitou Island via his bodyguard, Edward Morrissey. The mansion is bizarre: cluttered, reeking of disinfectant, oppressively warm. Wellington, long white-haired and frail, erupts with outrage at the suggestion his mother was involved with an Ojibwe man. He orders Cork out and throws the watch at him. Morrissey later ambushes Cork on the path with a brutal kidney punch.

Cork returns home to two revelations: Meloux has miraculously left the hospital with normal vital signs, and Jenny is pregnant. Cork is devastated, fearing her college plans are ruined. The next morning, Cork notices a Canadian-plated SUV near Meloux's cabin. He sends Stevie for help and races back with his revolver. He finds Meloux sitting calmly near his fire ring, having shot and killed Morrissey, who stalked him with a rifle. A grasshopper flew into Morrissey's face, spoiling his aim. Walleye was grazed but survives.

Sheriff Marsha Dross, whom Cork once hired as a deputy, investigates, but Canadian authorities stonewall the inquiry. A painful family meeting reveals Sean's ambivalence about the baby. Jenny tells her parents she wants to keep the child but not marry Sean.

Meloux attempts to drive to Canada alone to find his son. Cork catches him and strikes a deal: Meloux will tell his full story, and Cork will take him to Thunder Bay.

In a long flashback, fifteen-year-old Henry is at a government boarding school in South Dakota when he learns his father died in a logging accident. He runs away to the Iron Lake Reservation, where his uncle Woodrow Meloux takes him in at Crow Point. Woodrow teaches Henry wilderness skills and marksmanship. They guide two prospectors, Leonard Wellington and Carlos Lima, into the wilderness north of Iron Lake. The men find no gold. Henry saves Lima's life by shooting a charging bull moose. Henry later falls in love with Dilsey, a young Ojibwe teacher, but she marries a white man named Liam O'Connor. Woodrow dies the following winter, leaving Henry alone.

Years later, Leonard Wellington returns and hires Henry for an expedition by floatplane into the Canadian wilderness. Lima's daughter Maria accompanies them. She and Henry become secret lovers. They discover Maurice, a Black man of Haitian descent living alone in the wilderness after the death of his wife, Hummingbird, a member of the Odawa, an Indigenous people of the Great Lakes region. Maurice possesses gold, which originally drew Wellington and Lima north.

Wellington catches Henry leaving Maria's tent. In the violent confrontation, Lima is knocked unconscious. Wellington flies Lima and Maria out, threatening Henry. He returns without Maria, claiming Lima died, then shoots Henry in the thigh and sends a tracker named Pierre to find Maurice. Henry escapes and follows, but Wellington has already beaten Maurice, set the cabin on fire, and shot Pierre to eliminate a witness. Henry drags both men from the flames. Maurice, dying, begs Henry to end his suffering. Henry performs a mercy killing, then shoots the mortally wounded Pierre. Cauterizing his own wound, he staggers south through the wilderness. In a hallucinatory vision, he becomes a windigo, a mythic cannibal giant, and battles another. Odawa hunters find him with his hair turned white overnight. He stays for years learning the ways of the Midewiwin, the Ojibwe Grand Medicine healing society, becoming a healer himself before returning to Iron Lake.

Back in the present, Cork recruits Schanno and drives Meloux to Thunder Bay. Jo speculates that the attempt on Meloux's life is about keeping the truth of NMM's origins, founded on stolen gold and murder, from coming to light. Pollard offers her sailboat. They infiltrate the Manitou Island mansion during a storm and discover Wellington has never been there: The recluse is a performance created with wigs, theatrical makeup, and timed lights. Cork traces the deception to Preston Ellsworth, a local actor hired six years ago to impersonate Wellington.

Cork and Meloux confront Rupert at NMM headquarters. Wellington eventually calls and arranges a meeting at Flame Lake, deep in northwestern Ontario, where he lives in a log house. Meloux recognizes the place where he watched Maria swim seventy years earlier. Wellington listens to Meloux's story and asks for proof. Meloux leads them to the ruins of Maurice's cabin, where they uncover a dozen pouches of gold dust beneath the charred floorboards. That night, Wellington reveals he has seen Meloux in visions all his life. His mother believed Henry was dead, having found two bodies at the cabin the following spring. Maria married Leonard as a bargain: her silence for his, her father's money for his name. She left journals confirming she named her son Henry after Meloux.

The next morning, Rupert arrives by floatplane. He reveals he has known the truth from Leonard's private journals and sent Morrissey to kill Meloux. Benning and Dougherty, Rupert's security men, emerge with automatic weapons. Rupert plans to make Cork, Schanno, and Meloux disappear and stage Henry Wellington's death as a suicide.

Schanno upends the table and runs for the woods, drawing fire and taking a bullet in the leg. Trinky Pollard, who followed them in a green SUV, provides covering fire from the tree line but is killed by a return shot. Meloux and Wellington escape into the pines. Cork bandages Schanno's wound, then fights back: He shoots Benning, and Schanno shoots Dougherty. Rupert flees into the forest, but Meloux uses an old Ojibwe tracking trick, leaving an obvious trail then circling behind. Wellington persuades Meloux to return and help Schanno rather than hunt Rupert. They call police. Rupert turns himself in days later.

Cork heads home and learns that Jenny has had a miscarriage. He holds his daughter as she weeps.

In an epilogue near the end of August, Jenny departs for the University of Iowa with Jo. Schanno, grieving Pollard's death, gives his puppy, Trixie, to Stevie before moving to Maryland. Meloux spends ten days in Canada with his son and grandchildren, his heart healed. Pollard's ashes are spread over Lake Superior. Cork watches Stevie and Anne play with the new puppy and reflects on the inadequacy of the word "love" to capture everything humans value most.