Former small-town sheriff Cork O'Connor leads a desperate search-and-rescue mission into the unforgiving Minnesota wilderness in this "gritty, bloody adventure" (Publishers Weekly) from critically acclaimed author William Kent Krueger's award-winning mystery series.
The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart...

Even as he plots revenge on his wife for abandoning him for another man Thomas Chippering, a professor of linguistics cannot free himself of his obsession with women. He makes a pass at a student who blackmails him into giving her good marks.

August, 1958. A string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes, even in their beds: their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere. September 18, 1858. The Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead. Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene, is covered in blood from head to toe. At first she is mistaken for a survivor... but not a drop of the blood...