More or less retired to Montana, SF author Aaron Holland Broussard is faced with a series of crimes evidently committed by someone who's been dead for more than a hundred years.Aaron, now 85, has been haunted by the specter of his daughter, Fannie Mae, ever since she succumbed to alcohol, Ambien, and unsuitable men at the relatively tender age of 54. All he wants is to be left in peace on his homestead near the Flathead Reservation. Instead, he sees resentful neighbor John Fenimore Culpepper and his son, Leigh, painting a swastika on his barn door. Soon after he reports the outrage to State Trooper Ruby Spotted Horse and Sister Ginny Stokes, pastor of the New Gospel Tabernacle, stops off to repaint his door, he gets an unwelcome visit from Clayton and Jack Wetzel, a pair of meth-head brothers looking for trouble. Clayton's problems end when he's found dead near the railroad tracks, and Aaron tries to assuage Jack's by giving him some work around his place and treating him with unaccustomed decency. But Aaron himself is more and more troubled, not only because two cafe waitresses are killed in separate incidents, but because his visitations from Fannie Mae are supplemented by increasingly painful visions of Maj. Eugene Baker, who ordered a historic massacre of the Native Americans living on the land in 1870. The arrival of murderous meth dealer Jimmie Kale, a familiar Burke type, convinces Aaron that "Baker had the power to commit crimes in the present"-and that present-day America offers him unique avatars and opportunities to do so.Less mystery than history, less history than prophecy, and all the stronger for it.

At the start of this stunning supernaturally tinged entry in MWA Grand Master Burke-s long-running Holland family saga (after 2021-s Another Kind of Eden), a teenage boy spray paints a swastika on the barn of octogenarian author Aaron Holland Broussard in rural Montana. Broussard-s interactions with the teen lead him into conflict with a host of villains, including evangelical bikers and a meth dealer who has been known to bury people alive. On the side of the angels is Ruby Spotted Horse, the state trooper who responds to his call about the graffiti and who, it turns out, is also entrusted with keeping the malevolent Old People from escaping their confinement beneath her house. Broussard-s other ally is his dead daughter, Fannie Mae, who appears from time to time to just converse or to bring him warnings. Setting aside the ghosts, this is one of those extraordinary crime novels that feels more like real life, with incidents and people that aren-t obviously connected piling up in the protagonist-s life, rather than a neat set of clues pointing to a culprit. Once again, Burke uses genre fiction to plumb weighty issues, both social and emotional. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (May)