Small town, big secrets
Hapless traveler uncovers the dusty corners of rural Midwest

You’ve heard me say this before, and I’m sure you will have to put up with me saying it again. As cultivated writers are drawn to crime fiction, literary crime novels are coming from the big publishing houses every month now, whereas 10 years ago, they would have scoffed at the idea.

And I reckon you could also be fed up with me issuing must-read recommendations – fed up only if you’re not reading Murder Ink reviews. Whether you’re fed up or poised with two twenties in hand, here is the next installment of absolutely must-read books. It includes quite possibly the most must-read novel of 2023; it’s just that good.

“Distant Sons,” by Tim Johnston, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, bores into your head just a moment before it interferes with your heartbeat. A 400-page book, this book will take most of a month to read, what with all that dry-eyed staring over the uncoiling circumstances and heartbreaking winces over unintended consequences. 

The story of 26-year-old Sean Cortland driving from Billings, Mont., to Madison, Wis., to check out the rumor of work is what we see when we crack open the book. Two hours short of Madison, the engine in Cortland’s pickup overheats. He’s a few miles from the Mississippi River in Woebegone, Minn., as he pulls over, cars and trucks barreling past him and countryside without even utility poles. 

A good old boy in a white Dodge pickup, piled neatly with firewood, stops, opens the passenger window and asks Sean what the problem is. He asks, too, if Sean is a carpenter after seeing the big tool box in the bed of Sean’s truck. “Yes, sir, I’m a carpenter.”

After a little investigative chitchat, Lyle, the firewood guy, says he’ll take Sean back to a mechanic he knows, who can get his truck towed and fixed. And down the road feeling at ease and being a citizen of some reputation, Lyle offers up that the old stonemason Marion Deveraux in the big house outside of town needs a carpenter.

In this small highway town on the Mississippi River a few miles from Wisconsin, as in all rural settlements, what they call a tavern is the social, food, libations and disagreement center with a jukebox, dance floor, bar and kitchen.

There is also a steady circulation of law enforcement encamped in the parking lot after midnight to break up fistfights. You’ll meet angelic bartender Denise Givens, a sweet, good-looking, hard worker taking care of her grumpy, wheelchair-bound father.

Also part of the cast will be another traveler walking on the highway: Dan Young. Sean passes him going to the lumber yard and turns around to check on the lone walker as Lyle did for him. And to get started with the unintended consequences that make this story real, Dan and Sean go to work together on Deveraux’s job.

Also, we get back to seeing more clearly the characters and the machinations of a little spot on the planet peopled by the imperfect characters Johnston paints so well. 

“Distant Sons” is an affecting slice of life in a typical soiled community with well-kept but tense secrets that spring from dusty corners because of the authenticity of Sean Cortland, the carpenter.

Forty years ago, three children disappeared without a trace, leaving a collective scar that people worry about new eyes seeing all this time later. And the local tavern creates drunks who grow mightier with each shot – one of whom belittles the new carpenter and pays the price of defeat and humiliation in his own town by a man of courage and decency.

“Distant Sons” is a richly embroidered tapestry of longing, defeat, lonely love and murder. You’ll have to wait until Oct. 17 for your hardcover copy.

Order yours from Maria’s Bookshop with your 15% Murder Ink discount. Read this book.