Well, you have heard that I was on vacation and just returned on Thursday. I didn’t read a word while I was at Mom’s, so I don’t have a review for today. That doesn’t mean Sandie Herron doesn’t have a review of an audiobook, though. I’m grateful that she reviewed the tenth in William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor series, Vermilion Drift. Thank you, Sandie.

Vermilion Drift
Written by William Kent Krueger
Narrated by Buck Schirner
Series:  Cork O’Connor, Book 10
Unabridged Audiobook
Brilliance Audio (9/15/2010)
Listening Length:  10 hours 39 minutes
ASIN:  B0044KU2FA

No one wants a nuclear waste dump in their own backyard, yet the old iron mine in Tamarack County, Minnesota is being considered for just that.  Threats against the mine owners have former sheriff now private investigator Cork O’Connor on the job.  A careful review of new and old maps of the Vermilion Drift show a possible discrepancy.  Cork and a mine owner crawl through dark, cold passages and discover an additional tunnel never recorded where ore from reservation land may have been removed.  However, what they find in it now shocks everyone.

Six bodies are found in that empty room, five of which are skeletons and one that has been dead only a week, a woman Cork had been hired just that morning to find.  One skeleton is dressed in what the Ojibwe call a jingle dress, used in healing ceremonies.  Cork wonders if these bodies could be those of people who seemed to vanish in 1964 when his father was sheriff, since one had been wearing a jingle dress.  After visiting an elderly woman considered a town historian, she gives Cork his mother’s old journals which bring him new insight into her life, his family, and the town. 

What troubles Cork most, however, is the fact that two bodies, one new and one old, were killed by the same gun.  This gun was owned by Cork’s father which he used when he was sheriff.  It is the same gun Cork once carried as sheriff and the one he turned over to Ojibwe medicine man Henry Meloux for safe keeping following the school shootings which occurred years before. Cork again has a dream which has plagued him for decades, one where he reaches out to save his father and his attempt turns into something much worse.  Cork goes to the hiding place Meloux chose for the gun, and the gun is gone.

As Cork reads his mother’s old journals, events from his childhood come to life.  He pays particular attention to the period of the vanishings and begins to glean secrets perhaps best left in the past but that are crucial to his understanding events in his own life.  The secrets of the vanishings and today’s murder come into focus.

Author Kent Krueger takes us into the field of repressed memory as Cork struggles to deal with the secrets of his childhood.  The lengthy section dealing with Cork’s past would have benefited from a bit more editing.  However, it was intriguing to capture glimpses of what formed Cork’s personality and what forces were at work in Aurora as he grew up. 

I chose to listen to the Brilliance Audio version of this audiobook narrated by Buck Schirner because I prefer his down-to-earth, steady voice.  Unfortunately, this is out of print.  However, Recorded Books released a version narrated by David Chandler on 10/27/2020 which is easily available.