Windigo Island, (Cork O’Connor, 14), William Kent Krueger. Atria Books (ISBN: 9781476749242) 2025.
Summary: Cork, Jenny, and Henry join in a search for a missing Ojibwe girl when her friend’s body washes up on a sinister island.
It began as a daring prank of a teenage boy trying to impress a girl. Windigo Island was a rocky outcropping in the middle of Lake Superior. If you’ve been reading the series, you know that nothing good comes from a windigo, a cannibal beast. To hear a windigo call your name is to hear oneself targeted for death. And so the island had a reputation for being haunted.. It also had a rock face that was visible from shore, perfect for spray-painted messages. Bravado wins out over fear until a weird wind comes up and a terrible something is washed up on the rocks.
That “something” was the body of a fourteen-year old Chippewa girl, Carrie Verga. She, and her friend, Mariah Arceneaux, had disappeared a year before. Mariah’s family, related to Henry Meloux and Rainy, reach out to Cork for help in finding Mariah. Because of the way Rainy contacted Cork, Jenny decides to come along. And when she hears the story of the missing Mariah, she decides that she must be part of the search, which Cork reluctantly accepts. Because of the family connection, Henry insists on joining the search as well, even though he is nearly one hundred.
As it turns out, they are all needed–Jenny’s research, Cork’s investigative skills, and Henry’s quiet but courageous wisdom. For they are facing far more than a missing girl. Rather, they are facing a formidable enemy, a windigo, who even uses that name. He heads up a trafficking operation of underage girls servicing the needs of the men on lake freighters out of Duluth, male executives on yachts, and ultimately, North Dakota oil rig workers. Despite warnings, and despite both Cork and Jenny hearing their names from the windigo, the team persists, convinced that Mariah is in thrall to Windigo.
An Arceneaux family member, Daniel English, a game warden, also joins them. In an interesting subplot, Daniel and Jenny show a developing interest in each other. All of them make their way to North Dakota. To hear one’s name by a windigo marks one for death. But Cork and Henry have faced this before. Confronting a windigo means both facing down one’s fears, and becoming something of a windigo oneself. The question is, is Jenny up to this? The climax will have you on the edge of your seat.
As is already obvious, Jenny plays a big part in this book and Krueger develops her character further. Krueger also continues to explore the cost to Cork of standing between evil and those he cares about. This does not come without dangers to his soul. He needs Henry, though he does not always realize it.
Finally, William Kent Krueger exposes the evil of child sex trafficking. Whether servicing men in remote settings or the billionaire set, we see how perpetrators groom them and how men use them and discard them like trash. However, we also see the courageous work of those who seek to rescue women and work with survivors. Sadly the reality of the need for such work is no fiction.