THE RED CANOE

March 21, 2022
At the start of this intriguing if choppily plotted crime novel from Johnson (The Devil You Know), Michael “Buck” Fineday, who lives alone near Minnesota’s Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation, considers shooting himself after his estranged wife serves him with divorce papers, but after flipping a coin decides instead to continue building handcrafted boats and takes on 15-year-old Lucy Walter as an apprentice. Lucy, herself a loner, lives with her widowed alcoholic father in a run-down trailer on the reservation, where she has become the victim of a group of child abusers whose members consider her fair game to rape at will. When Lucy’s best friend is murdered, she fears for her own life and turns to Buck for help. Buck uses his backwoods knowledge and training as a government agent to try to thwart the villains. The organized rape club setup stretches credulity, as does the way characters sometime behave (Lucy shows up at Buck’s eager to learn boat building shortly after she’s been sexually assaulted), but readers will care enough about Buck and Lucy to want to see how they fare in the end. Those new to Johnson may be curious to check out his previous work. Agent: Madison Smartt Bell, Ayesha Pande Literary.

Starred review from March 1, 2022

When Buck's wife files for divorce, he considers suicide. He realizes, though, that he still has his boat-building hobby, and there's a feral cat he wants to tame. There's also a girl who appears at the end of his driveway. Like Buck, Lucy Walters is Ojibwe; they also share a deep feeling of pain. Lucy has lost everything except her father. He's a cop, and when he's not at their trailer, his colleagues sexually abuse the 15-year-old Lucy. The first one who raped her warned her not to tell her father, or they'd "take care" of him. Buck recognizes Lucy's need to restore her identity, so he teaches her to build a canoe to help her journey to survival. His wife always said he needed a project, someone to save. This time, he and Lucy, along with a couple friends who are outsiders, work to take down the men who should be protecting them. VERDICT Similar to David Heska Wanbli Weiden's Winter Counts, Johnson's ("Paul Two Persons Mysteries" series) novel is a powerful story of Indigenous people who are abused but also determined to battle brutality and corruption themselves when they can't rely on the authorities.--Lesa Holstine

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Starred review from March 1, 2022
In the face of disastrous personal collateral damage, Buck Fineday offers a simple explanation for helping an abused teen face down a ring of powerful pedophiles: "She knew I was someone who would do something." When 14-year-old Lucy wanders into Buck's woodworking shop, he sees her bruises and bloody clothes but knows she won't reveal the truth unless he treads lightly. Noting her appreciation of his craft, he offers to teach her to build a canoe and slowly wades into Lucy's dire situation. She's the target of a seemingly untouchable group of pedophiles, her father's fellow cops, who stepped in to "look after her"" following her mother's death. They'll kill her father if she tries to stop them, and that's enough to control her until they murder her best friend and Lucy realizes they intend to silence her next. Led by battle-savvy Buck, Lucy's friends Booker and Ryan, and Ryan's mother, initiate a risky showdown in northern Minnesota's icy wilderness. Buck and Lucy's growing connection through their Ojibwe language, love of woodworking, and soberingly pragmatic take on predation is both heart-warming and gut-wrenching. Johnson, whose earlier and equally fine thriller The Devil You Know (2004), was also set in the wilds of Minnesota, offers a nuanced, superbly written justice thriller laced with unflinching grit and social commentary.

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