I'm in love

Valentine's Day, right? Love, right?

Of course I love Bern, my wife of, come next September, 48 years. Can you believe it?

I was 23 and she was 20 and we had no idea what we were doing.....

I am still, I believe, the only non-Roman Catholic to marry into either side of her family. And she is, I believe, still the only Roman Catholic to marry into either side of my family. (Well, there was one of my Jones cousins but--this is true--they broke up in the limo to the reception. Go figure.)

On one level we were committed to stick together to 'stick it to' both our families who knew it wouldn't work. On a deeper level, love really can bridge any river....

But the love I'm talking about here is that I've fallen in love with a writer. His name is William Kent Krueger. I read his most recent novel a week or so ago and went to the library to see how many of his books they had. I found 6. I put them in chronological order and started with the earliest one. In two days I read two of them!

He writes about the O'Connor family in Tamarack County, Minnesota-- a place I can hardly imagine--in the North-East corner of the state, surrounded by lakes big and small and near the Canadian border.  Cork, the father is a Chicago cop, Sheriff of Tamarack County and then a Private Investigator. He has three children and they grow through the books. Cork is 1/4 Ojibwa Indian (what we probably think of as Chippewa) and there is a reservation in his county and his best friend is an Indian 'seer' so there is lots of Native American Spirituality in the books.

I simply love these books, though I don't think everyone would.

I've fallen in love with writer's before: J.D. Salinger was the first and hot on his heels was Kurt Vonnegut. Then Ursala LaGuin and J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. Then F. Scott Fitzgerald and others of his ilk. Recently  Louise Penny and Laura Lippman. I know I've left some out, but those stand out.

I don't think I can read anything else until I finish the ones I have by Krueger--they are complex and yet real and simple. Hard to explain.

Then I might have to find the ones the library didn't have and read those....

A labor of love, I assure you.

Check him out if you wish too.