In this episode, Ross talks with William Kent Krueger about his Cork O'Connor series, including a sneak peak of the next book in the series, God's Country. Krueger discusses his use of a small town setting, spirituality, and a dynamic protagonist to keep his long-running series compelling to readers.Krueger will be visiting the Sharon Forks Library on October 9 and October 10. Please check our Events Calendar for registration details.
Introduction:
Ross Gericke: Hello and welcome to Unreadable, the official Forsyth County Public Library Podcast for news, upcoming programs, and recommendations. I’m your host, Ross Gericke, the branch manager at Hampton Park.
In this episode, I speak with William Kent Krueger, who just goes by Kent, about his writing interests and long-running Cork O’Connor series. The most recent novel in that series, Apostle's Cove, released earlier this month, and if you would like to see him in person, Kent will be speaking in person at the Sharon Forks Library on both Thursday, October 9 at 6:00PM and Friday, October 10 at 12:00PM. Make sure to go to our Events Calendar online to register to attend.
Now on with the show.
Interview:
Ross Gericke: Kent, welcome to the podcast.
Kent Krueger: A pleasure to be with you, Ross.
Ross Gericke: So, Kent, I'm a new fan. Having just finished Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O'Connor series, and Ordinary Grace, a standalone novel that you won the Edgar Award for. So, we'll start simple with the questions. Both of those novels take place in smalltown Minnesota. What is it about that setting that appeals to you?
Kent Krueger: Well, I grew up in small towns, so I am familiar with the dynamics of small town life. It appeals to me. In terms of northern Minnesota, I have found those communities to be very welcoming [and] unique in their own ways. All small towns are alike in some ways and unique in others. And I just love exploring in that community, that close community, where everyone knows everyone, everyone believes they know everyone's secrets, but in my novels, that's not always true.
Ross Gericke: So, this may seem like an odd comparison, and I don't know if you're going to be crazy about it, but the feel of those books reminded me a lot of the way Stephen King approaches his novels, right? You've got these sort of small cozy towns, lots of nostalgia, but there's a seriously dark underbelly to some of that stuff. Now your novels are more clearly based in reality than Stephen King's, but what about that juxtaposition between cozy and dark draws you?
Kent Krueger: Yeah, you wouldn't have a good story if you didn't have some darkness involved in it. You know, if everything were all sweetness and light, who would want to read that? I guess there is a subgenre that deals with nothing but sweetness and light, but that ain't me. Uh, so yeah, I enjoy particularly exploring the dark side of human nature. I find it kind of healthy in a way. It allows me to acknowledge that there is a darkness in probably all of us, and I enjoy in my work exploring that part of ourselves that we really don't want to look at and figure out where it comes from and how do we deal with that.
Ross Gericke: It's funny ‘cause your novels really struck a chord with me because my mom is from a small town: Ponchatoula, Louisiana, which is a teeny tiny small town in south Louisiana. And we'd go visit, you know, multiple times a year. And it is one of those places, I said, "Mom, this is like Mayberry,” you know, like people would know me. I'd only visit a couple times a year, you know what I mean?
Kent Krueger: On the surface it looks like Mayberry, yeah.
Ross Gericke: Right. And there would be, you know, every few years there would be – the paper was mostly boring, but occasionally there'd be like the drug bust or the gambling ring that got discovered. And they were people that [had] names you recognized. And they weren't monsters. They were just people.
Kent Krueger: Yeah, I mean that's the nature of evil. It masks itself behind normalcy. And so that's in large measure what I do in my Cork O’Connor novels in particular. I've got Cork who is pretty upright, you know, standup guy, but I usually pit him against evil of some kind. Sometimes it's mundane evil, but very often it is evil of the highest nature. And that's where true conflict comes in and suspense and the thrill ride that any reader is going to expect in the kind of novel that I write.
Ross Gericke: So your novels also feature a variety of Christian belief systems including Catholicism and Methodism, but also give equal weight to varying Native American belief systems. What role does spirituality play in your work?
Kent Krueger: Well, if you were to read my Cork O’Connor series, you would see that very often there's an undercurrent that deals with the spiritual journey. It's something that comes very naturally for my protagonist, Cork O’Connor, because he's a man of mixed heritage. He's part Irish American and he's part Ojibwe, Anishinaabe. So he's a man with a foot in two different spiritual traditions, his white Catholicism and his Ojibwe spirituality. And so in those novels, he's very often trying to figure out where his unique spiritual path lies. And that's been an issue for me my whole life. And so I have often used the Cork O’Connor stories just to explore that question: where do our spiritual paths take us?
In Ordinary Grace, which you have indicated you read, I wrote that novel really with the idea of wanting to explore more deeply the importance of the spiritual journey in our lives. So in terms of the Ojibwe spirituality [and] the native spirituality, once you begin to take a look, a deep look at any indigenous population, you're going to see that spirituality, for those who are traditional, it just infuses – it is in every aspect of their life – how they look at one another, how they look at the world, how they look at their community. Everything is connected and everything is holy. And so that really has, you know, changed in some profound ways how I approach my own spirituality.
Ross Gericke: And I liked how you didn't just ever come to easy conclusions in either of those novels. Like the spiritual nature is definitely there, but it didn't feel like you were like, "And here's the moral lesson that you learned." It was just here's the situation, [and] now you have to think through it. I appreciated that.
Kent Krueger: Yeah. Well, if I beat people over the head with any idea, you know, they're going to close that book. They don't want to hear that. But, you know, what I've learned, Ross, is that you can put important ideas and issues at the heart of a story, and as long as you wrap them in a good compelling tale, people are going to read that. And maybe they'll close that book thinking deeply about what you've offered them.
Ross Gericke: So, I've only read the first of the Cork O’Connor books, Iron Lake, which came out in 1998, but you just released the 21st book in the series, Apostle’s Cove, just this month, right?
Kent Krueger: That's correct.
Ross Gericke: So, how would you introduce the series to a reader, and what can we look forward to in the new novel?
Kent Krueger: Sure. I write a series that is set in the great north woods of Minnesota, way up near the Canadian border, right next door to what we call the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth. My protagonist, Cork O'Connor, is a man of mixed heritage, as I've said, Irish and Ojibwe. He's the former sheriff of the fictional Tamarack County, Minnesota. Because of that mixture in his heritage and largely because of the area in which I have chosen to set my work, a lot of the stories that I write in this series come from issues that rise out of the interface of those two cultures, white and Ojibwe.
So, I've written about Indian gaming casinos and the effect that that's had both on the Ojibwe population and the surrounding white community. I've written about the influx of the drug and the gang cultures on the reservation. I've written about the really tragic situation that exists here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and in many large urban areas that have a significant native population, that deals with the sexual trafficking of vulnerable native women and children. Always at some level in my work, I try to deal with the whole question of racial prejudice.
Ross Gericke: And just from an almost logistical perspective, how do you keep – how do you manage such a long running series? The first book [was] released 27 years ago. Do you age the characters? Do you just gently slide them into modern times? Do they stay the same like comic book characters, or do you change them up?
Kent Krueger: So mystery writing 101, Ross: when you create a series with a central protagonist at the heart of it, I contend you only have two choices in the kind of protagonist you're going to create. You can create a static protagonist or you can create a dynamic protagonist. What's a static protagonist? That's somebody who never changes. Somebody who's the same story to story to story. Think Sherlock Holmes. You read one Sherlock Holmes story, he's going to be the same guy in every story you read after that. What's a dynamic protagonist? That's somebody who does change. Somebody who ages. Somebody for whom what happens in one entry in the series is going to be reflected in subsequent entries in how that character responds to the world.
When I conceived Cork and published that first novel, I imagined him to be a man of about 40. He has aged about almost 20 years across the course of the series. His children when the series opens were very young. Now they are married. Cork has a grandson. So the relationships change. The people change. How they see each other and themselves change. And that's really what has kept it, for me, compelling as a writer, because these are never the same characters when I sit down to write a new entry in the series. Things have happened to them that have changed them. And for me, it's a journey of discovery. I'm always interested to figure out with this new novel: who are these people now? And I think that's what keeps it interesting for readers as well.
Ross Gericke: So, Kent, we know that Apostle’s Cove is your current new book, but what do you have up next for us to look forward to?
Kent Krueger: Ross, I met work on the next book in the Cork O’Connor series. It's a novel that will be called God's Country. And here's what's happening. The book takes place almost entirely in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. And anybody who's been in the Boundary Waters, you know why we call it God's Country. Well, Cork goes into the Boundary Waters expecting his usual spiritual experience. But when his path crosses the path of two men whose souls belong to the devil, all hell breaks loose. It's a great story.
Ross Gericke: I'm in, Kent. And that gives me something to look forward to. Like I said, I really enjoyed the first one a lot.
Kent Krueger: Good. Good.
Ross Gericke: So, now I've got 20 additional books to work my way through. That should keep me busy for a little while.
Kent Krueger: A little binge reading there, Ross? That's just fine.
Ross Gericke: Listen, preaching to the choir. Librarian. Binge reading. It's what I do. Kent, this has been great. Thank you for coming on the podcast.
Kent Krueger: It's been a pleasure, Ross. Thanks for having me.
Outro
Ross Gericke: Thank you for listening to the September 2025 episode of Unreadable.
Please subscribe to our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Contact the podcast directly with any comments by email at Unreadable@forsythpl.org
Keep up with all the excitement happening each month on our interactive calendar available on our website, www.forsythpl.org. You can also stay connected with the library through Facebook and Instagram @FOCOlibrary.
Our theme music is “Open Those Bright Eyes” composed by Kevin MacLeod. This and other compositions by Kevin MacLeod are available at Incompetech.com
I’m Ross Gericke, and this podcast has been Unreadable.
No comments:
Post a Comment