William Kent Krueger, THE RIVER WE REMEMBER
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[1:03]William Kent Krueger is the author of the river we remember a novel raised in the Cascade
[1:08]Mountains of Oregon.
[1:09]William Kent Krueger, who goes by Kent, attended Stanford University before being kicked
[1:13]out for radical activities.
[1:15]After that, he logged to timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism
[1:19]and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota.
[1:23]He has been married for 50 years to a marvelous woman who was a retired attorney.
[1:27]He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he loves dearly.
[1:30]Ordinary Grace, his standalone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given
[1:36]by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published that year.
[1:40]The companion novel, this tender land, was published in September 2019 and spent nearly
[1:45]six months on the New York Times bestseller list.
[1:48]His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft
[1:52]McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dallas Award, and the
[1:56]Friends of American Writers Prize.
[1:58]His last 11 novels were all New York Times best sellers.
[2:03]Welcome, Kent.
[2:04]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[2:05]Have time to read books to discuss the river we remember a novel.
[2:10]I'll pleasure to be with you.
[2:11]Thank you for the invitation.
[2:13]Of course.
[2:14]I have to say this impressed my mother the most of probably any podcast I've done.
[2:19]She is your biggest fan ever.
[2:22]His tender land is literally her favorite book and she's like, no, I can't believe it.
[2:27]You're talking to him?
[2:28]So yeah.
[2:29]Would you give her my best?
[2:31]I will.
[2:32]I will give her your best.
[2:33]I will make sure she listens.
[2:35]Actually speaking of listening, I listened to part of this book on audiobook, which was really
[2:40]wonderful.
[2:41]I had this long central park walk and I listened to the, I got right into the feel of it.
[2:46]It was wonderful and then read the rest on paper.
[2:49]So kudos to the audiobook team as well.
[2:53]Yeah.
[2:54]You know, I haven't had a chance to listen to the audio version.
[2:56]I listened to the audition tape, like the voice, but honestly, I don't tend to listen
[3:02]to my audiobooks because no matter how good the reader is, they don't read it quite the
[3:07]way I would.
[3:08]And you don't want to.
[3:11]Do you know, I got the job.
[3:14]Oh my gosh.
[3:16]So you've had a full some strings.
[3:18]Okay.
[3:19]Okay.
[3:20]For listeners who have not read the river we remember, can you please tell them about
[3:24]this book?
[3:25]Sure.
[3:26]The river we remember is set in the summer of 1958.
[3:30]It takes place in southern Minnesota in an area I call black earth county.
[3:35]It opens on Memorial Day, 1958 when the county's leading citizen man named Jimmy Quinn
[3:42]is found floating in the Alabaster River, which runs through town.
[3:46]from a shotgun blast and nearly naked.
[3:49]Ziggy, this is truly a mystery because the question at the heart of the story is who killed
[3:54]Jimmy Quinn.
[3:55]But that's not really what it's about.
[3:57]That's true.
[3:58]I like that pitch, by the way, very well done, leaves some intrigue and all of that.
[4:04]I feel like the setting is as much a character as anybody else in this book.
[4:08]Tell me about the landscape, how you evoke the sense of imagery and just how immersive
[4:14]you make it because I feel like we are all through trotting along as we go through the
[4:18]story.
[4:19]Yeah.
[4:20]I write profoundly out of a sense of place.
[4:21]As to most of the writers whose work I admire, I am not native to Minnesota.
[4:26]I didn't move here until I was in my very early 30 some more wife could go to the University
[4:31]of Minnesota law school.
[4:33]And before that I was a nomad kid.
[4:34]I lived all over the place.
[4:36]And I never really had anywhere that, you know, I called her thought of this home.
[4:39]But I swear to you the minute I set foot in Minnesota and you had found home.
[4:42]I felt madly in love with this place.
[4:44]And so every time I sit down to write a story set here, whether it's up north in my New
[4:49]York Times, best selling gorko counter mystery series in Southern Minnesota or all my
[4:54]standalone's have been set.
[4:56]It is in a way of valentine to this adopted homeland of mine.
[5:01]I did in fact spend a number of years growing up in the Midwest when I was a kid.
[5:05]My adolescence was spent there.
[5:07]So my heart really is invested in that sense of place because it's so important to me.
[5:12]And I, you know, I approach place in the way when I used to teach creative writing,
[5:16]I always told my students, you should create sense of place in the same way that you
[5:20]create character because place has all of the characteristics that we would think of when
[5:25]we're establishing character.
[5:27]It has a voice.
[5:28]It has a face, you know, if you've been in the Midwest, you know, it has a particular
[5:32]smell.
[5:33]It has a culture to it.
[5:36]And so I create my place in the way I create all of the important characters of my stories
[5:42]because I think place is one of the most important characters in the story.
[5:46]All right, true.
[5:47]Who are some of those authors you mentioned that in the authors you admire place has an
[5:51]equal role?
[5:52]You know, in the mystery genre, I might cite Louise Penny, her three pines in Canada,
[5:59]CJ Box or Craig Johnson in Wyoming.
[6:04]Certainly James Lee Burke has series is Dave Robechero series, which is set in the New Orleans
[6:09]area.
[6:11]So in terms of the genre, you've got a few there, but certainly there are fine writers
[6:16]outside our genre.
[6:17]We think of my literary authors.
[6:20]I have a profound sense of place.
[6:22]You know, my favorite novel of all time is tequila mocking bird in the sense of place that
[6:27]Harper Lee establishes.
[6:28]There is just profound.
[6:31]I think we all should study that novel for lessons in how to create that profound sense
[6:36]of time in place.
[6:37]I mean, hers was also set in an earlier time minus set in 1958, which causes my novel
[6:43]to be called an historical novel, which always tickles me because I was alive then.
[6:48]And I don't think of myself as an historical figure, not yet anyway.
[6:52]That's literally for my publishing company.
[6:55]We don't publish historical fiction and I use my birth.
[6:58]I was born in 1976 and like anything after that is not historical fiction.
[7:04]No, it's due to present.
[7:05]Oh my goodness.
[7:07]Oh my gosh.
[7:08]So if I were a student of yours and you're creative writing class and you've sold me on
[7:13]the idea that place is just as important, what would, how do you do it?
[7:17]Like what are like two things to keep in mind when you're really creating a great sense
[7:22]of place?
[7:23]Well, I used to tell my students the first thing you don't do is give your reader a travel
[7:27]log.
[7:28]There's nothing that's going to slow, slow story down and detail after detail after detail
[7:33]of sense of place.
[7:34]So typically I would encourage them to find what is specific that can give a larger sense
[7:40]of the place and maybe unique something that they're not going to see somewhere else.
[7:45]And then slowly across the course of your work, you give them more additional details.
[7:51]So you build a place as you build character over time and patiently.
[7:55]Interesting.
[7:57]So I was drawn to the scene in particular where Jimmy's family is told that he's not
[8:02]coming back and he, the way that they respond to the loss and this, the children and
[8:09]the wife and how even though they thought maybe he was up to no good, this is for good.
[8:15]Tell me about how you recreate that sense of timing and the emotion that it evokes in
[8:22]the moment because a lot of people have been in that moment.
[8:25]Well, you know, when you write a mystery, part of the art is misdirection.
[8:32]And so while you are trying to give important information, you're also trying to give clues
[8:38]in a way that the reader is not necessarily going to pick up on immediately.
[8:43]When I wrote the scene in which Sherbrody turned delivers the news of Jimmy Quinn's death,
[8:50]his family reacts in the way many families would react with sort of the stun.
[8:56]You can't quite comprehend the reality of it quite yet.
[9:01]One of the, you know, his son responds in a very different way from the rest of the family.
[9:07]There's a great deal of resentment in his part.
[9:10]The other is, as Brody turned reflects on it later, understands and he has delivered
[9:15]many forms of bad news to families.
[9:18]Understands that grief, if it's going to come, can take a while and can take unusual forms.
[9:24]So that's how I constructed that particular scene with all that in mind.
[9:32]Have you received bad news?
[9:34]Did you draw on any of your own on those moments where you had trouble processing what
[9:39]you know from what you feel or all that?
[9:44]You know, Zibi I have never received that kind of bad news, but I think one of the reasons
[9:49]I'm a storyteller and those of us who are storytellers, our practitioners of our art is that
[9:54]for whatever reason, we possess the ability to sink ourselves deeply into the imagining.
[10:00]experiences, events that we have not been a part of or had ourselves, and find the words to
[10:07]create them in a realistic way on the page. I think, you know, if you're really a storyteller,
[10:13]I think you're so sink yourself so deeply into the imagining of things that you go, maybe a
[10:18]little deeper than conscious thought. And I think you touch the universals. And when you come up
[10:23]from these places, you bring insights that are, you know, you can just sit back and say,
[10:28]I have no idea where that came from. Thank you, Lord. Interesting. I know it is magic. What
[10:34]are subconscious can do? Boy, howdy. When you started writing this book, what was the initial spark?
[10:41]Where did you start? What made you want to write it? What was the piece of it that appealed to you?
[10:46]Well, on my elevator version, I said that that's not what the book is really about. Here's what
[10:50]the book is really about. Yeah, in the early 1940s, my father graduated from high school, enlisted
[10:57]in the military service and headed over to Europe to fight in World War II. He was just a kid. He
[11:02]was like 18 years old. He came back years later, a man deeply wounded in body and in spirit by what
[11:07]the war had done to him. I recognize now that he was probably suffering from PTSD, but, you know,
[11:13]they didn't talk about that back then. Or if they made reference to that, that at all,
[11:17]the, you know, the cost it shells, called it shell shock or battle fatigue. And when I was a kid,
[11:22]you know, like all kids, I pestered my dad for war stories, did you kill any German stat?
[11:27]And he absolutely refused to talk about it. And he was, you know, he was very like the,
[11:32]the fathers of my friends. Guys who liked my dad had gone away to fight in World War II or the Korean
[11:37]war. And they all went away, boys, you know, some of them weren't even old enough to shave yet.
[11:42]And they came back men wounded deeply by the horrors that they had seen and the horrors that
[11:47]they had been a part of. And I've wondered all my life, how could anyone heal from that kind of
[11:52]of wounding? What about the people they left behind their wives, their mothers, their fathers,
[11:56]their sisters, people who I'm sure were praying for them desperately while they were off fighting.
[12:00]And maybe when they lost them on the battlefield, how did they heal from their wounds? How did
[12:04]anybody find a way to heal? And that's really what the river we remember is about.
[12:10]That's beautiful. What gets you out of bed in the morning to keep writing? Like, what is it about it
[12:16]that is just so appealing to you? You know, I have always been a storyteller as far back as I can
[12:21]remember. And I began over 40 years ago, a regime that I fall into this day. I get up at six o'clock
[12:28]every morning, seven days a week. And back in the old days before the pandemic made a shelter in place,
[12:34]I would go to a coffee shop and spend the first two or three hours of the day writing. I had,
[12:39]during the pandemic, I had to exchange my kitchen counter for the coffee shop about a store right
[12:43]every morning for two or three hours. And just the idea of doing what I love most, first thing in the
[12:51]day just popped me right out of bed, particularly if I went work on a project that just has captured
[12:57]my heart tonight in a profound way. And that's usually the way it is. It typically don't write
[13:01]something that I can't invest my heart in. And that has certainly been true of my stand-alone,
[13:06]all of those novels that I've said in Southern Minnesota. Interesting. What is something that
[13:12]someone who hasn't been to Southern Minnesota should know about it? You know, most of the
[13:18]country, so much of the country, ignores the Midwest, the Heartland. You know, we're the great
[13:23]flyover. And people are, you know, the sophisticated people on the East Coast and the sophisticated
[13:28]people on the West Coast. They really have no idea of what they're missing. The Heartland is such
[13:32]a beautiful place. It has an agrarian beauty. It has beautiful little river valleys. If you drive
[13:40]through in the spring and the crops are just coming up and the fields are these beautiful rows
[13:46]of green sprouts or you come through during the summer and you see the corn, you know,
[13:51]knee-high by the 4th of July or you drive through in the fall at harvest time and you see those
[13:57]big combines out there late into the night harvesting the corn or the wheat or the soybeans or
[14:04]whatever the harvesting. It's just stunningly beautiful, particularly in the fall when we have so much
[14:08]color here. And so I try to, you can tell I hope that my heart is in the Heartland and I try
[14:16]to give that love to readers. I try to, when I write novel set here in Minnesota, I try to make
[14:22]them a valentine to this adopted home of mine. Who do you miss writing about the most? Which
[14:28]character? In the river we remember, I loved Connie Graff. He was such a, you know, he was such a
[14:35]citizen of this time guy who has lots of wisdom, has lots of guilt for his own reasons,
[14:43]has just this huge embracing heart and I loved creating him as a character. I loved spending time
[14:49]with him. The other character that I really appreciated a lot was Scott Madison. A kid is trying
[14:55]to understand what it is to be a man, particularly in the post-World War II, post-Korean war era,
[15:01]when we were, you know, looked at as a victorious nation and man. He rose a bounding, you know,
[15:07]the oddy Murphy tale and back kind of a thing. Scott's really struggling to figure out what it is
[15:14]to be a man and those of us particularly who grow up in that period really understand that,
[15:20]I think, because for us so much of manhood seemed to be linked to your ability to be a warrior.
[15:28]When so Scott's really struggling with that and I so identified and loved that kid.
[15:32]How did you come to terms with, I mean, I imagine your relationship with your father if he's
[15:38]closed off to talking about war might have closed off a whole section of him to you and the
[15:44]emotional connection perhaps? What was that relationship like? Yeah, that was absolutely true,
[15:49]but I think that was true so many men of my father's generation. These are guys who were
[15:54]typically unemotional, you know, they'll talk sports with you, they'll teach you how to ride a bike,
[15:59]grow a football, hit a baseball, but when he comes to talking about feelings they're just not
[16:06]comfortable with that. Later on in his life my father was much better at it, but when I was growing up
[16:12]that wasn't him. He was a loving father, wonderful father, but we didn't talk hard to art stuff.
[16:18]And have you done things differently yourself? I hope so.
[16:26]Yeah, you know, I think you would have to talk to my children if that is in fact true
[16:33]that I have I have opened my heart to them. I hope I have.
[16:38]I always say we do everything in opposite, you know, it's either in reaction to and we do the
[16:43]opposite or we do the same, but it's hard to just make up the rules of parenting. It comes from
[16:48]somewhere, right? Some response to what we do. You know, the truth is in the end we don't really
[16:53]have an idea of what our children make of us as parents until they are parents themselves and they
[16:59]begin to share. Oh, now I get it. I understand. Oh, I see what you were I see what you had to deal with
[17:07]when I was growing up. Yeah, such a so true. My goodness. In terms of sort of plotting out your novel
[17:16]figuring out when to tell the reader what and do you outline like what is your process of putting
[17:21]these books together? You know, if I write, I follow two different processes depending on the kind
[17:26]of story that I'm going to be writing. If I'm writing a story in my Corco Conner series,
[17:32]those are all essentially mysteries and mysteries are very tightly woven fabric of storytelling.
[17:37]Everything depends so significantly on everything else. And I think that the success of a mystery
[17:42]depends largely on the timing of the reveals. When do you get the reader, the clues that are going
[17:47]to be necessary to solving the mystery at the heart of the story. So when I write a story in my
[17:51]Corco Conner series, I think that story through as completely as I can before I ever put my fingers
[17:57]to the keyboard. At the end of that, that long process, it can take weeks or sometimes months.
[18:01]I know how the story begins. I know how it ends. I know who did what to whom and why. I know the themes
[18:06]that I want to weave through the story. But with my standalone's ordinary grace this
[18:11]tender land and now the river we remember, I wanted a different process. A mystery is an
[18:18]intellectual construct. You create a puzzle in your head and you're working like crazy to make sure
[18:23]all the pieces fit seamlessly together. My standalone's didn't come from my head. They came from my
[18:29]heart. And so I wanted a process that would help the reader feel like I was telling you this story
[18:35]straight from my own art. So going into the writing of these novels, these standalone's,
[18:40]I've only known a few elements that I was going to include in the story. And then I let the
[18:45]story reveal itself to me as I was writing it. Let the characters come to me. We veal themselves
[18:50]to me. And that that creative process I got to tell you, Zibi, is just extraordinary. It's like
[18:57]nothing, nothing I've ever experienced before. But I would never approach a Corco Conner novel that way.
[19:03]Interesting. How do you keep all of these going? Do you ever get tired of it? And how do you feel
[19:09]also about like, how do you feel about having to continue to do book publicity and talk to people
[19:15]like me after writing so many books? Do you get tired of this? Or do you like it? And I don't
[19:20]mean specifically, but going on tour. Like when you have to mark it all of your books, do you get
[19:25]tired of that? Or are there parts of it that you absolutely love or parts of it you like less
[19:30]curious? Yeah, you know, the cold splash of reality that every published author
[19:35]is hit with that first book is the realization that probably your publisher is not going to do
[19:39]a lot to help get that book into the hands of readers. That's going to be on your shoulders.
[19:44]So in addition then to being a writer, you have to become a promoter. And some people are better
[19:50]at it than others. Very early on, one of the primary forms for me, a promotion where the more
[19:57]personal appearances with my...
[20:00]advance on my very first novel,
[20:01]because my publisher didn't put together a tour,
[20:04]I put a lot of money into touring across the country myself
[20:07]and meeting booksellers everywhere.
[20:09]And those relationships that I established
[20:11]with that very first book are still important to me today.
[20:15]So I still think for me,
[20:17]the best and most enjoyable form of promotion
[20:21]is are the personal appearances that I make.
[20:23]For the river, we remember I have somewhere
[20:25]between 45 and 50 events that I'm doing.
[20:28]I'm about halfway finished with that.
[20:30]We have quite a few ahead of me.
[20:32]But then you've got to be on social media.
[20:34]And that maybe is the most difficult part for me.
[20:37]I have a Facebook page and Twitter and Instagram
[20:40]and I have to come up with content to put out there
[20:43]for readers so they don't forget who I am.
[20:45]And that's a little onerous at times.
[20:48]And can sometimes be intrusive.
[20:51]Yeah, don't you get tired?
[20:52]You don't get tired.
[20:53]You seem to have boundless energy.
[20:56]You caught me on a good morning.
[20:57]This got back from a very long swing in the south
[21:02]and in the southeast for the river we remember.
[21:05]So I was tired yesterday.
[21:06]I'm feeling pretty, I just came back from a bike ride
[21:09]and nothing else uses me like a bike ride.
[21:12]But I have a lot still going ahead.
[21:14]I know that I will be very tired by the end of everything.
[21:19]And I will be saying to myself, never again.
[21:22]And then the book that will come out next year
[21:24]will come out and I'll probably be doing the same thing.
[21:27]And what is the book coming out next year?
[21:29]It will be the next book in my Corco Conner series,
[21:32]number 20 in my Corco Conner series,
[21:34]a novel called Spirit Crossing.
[21:36]And then do you, are you going to do a stand-alone
[21:38]after the next one?
[21:40]Is it, are you going to keep alternating?
[21:41]Yes, okay.
[21:43]Not necessarily keep alternating,
[21:44]but there's been, you know, I have contractual obligations.
[21:46]I have to meet in my Corco Conner series,
[21:49]the manuscript of the book that will be coming out next year
[21:51]is the first of two books that I'm under contract to write
[21:54]for the series.
[21:55]But before I embark on that next Corco Conner novel,
[21:58]I have a stand-alone that has just been pounded at the door,
[22:01]begging to be written for some time now.
[22:04]So I'll probably spend a couple of years on that manuscript.
[22:07]How long did the river we remember take?
[22:09]Well, the initial writing of it took two years,
[22:11]then I set it aside for six years.
[22:14]And then I came back to it and spent another year and a half on it.
[22:18]Why did you set it aside?
[22:20]It wasn't good enough.
[22:22]My publisher had paid me an enormous amount for that manuscript.
[22:26]But shortly before a deadline, I let them know there is no way,
[22:31]I know how to tell this story correctly right now.
[22:34]And I'm not going to give you something that is,
[22:36]in my opinion, failed simply because I need to meet contract.
[22:40]They were really very understanding.
[22:42]And, but they told me, you know, you're still low.
[22:45]It's a companion novel to ordinary grace of stand-alone novel.
[22:49]So what I gave them instead, Zebi, was a novel called
[22:52]This Tender Land, which ended up spending six months
[22:54]on the New York Times bestseller list.
[22:56]So I think all in all it was a good decision.
[22:59]So they were okay with it, I guess.
[23:01]Yeah.
[23:03]Well, good for you for trusting your instincts and all that.
[23:06]I mean, it would have been so easy just to hand it in.
[23:09]Do you know, again, when I used to teach creative writing,
[23:13]I would tell my students, you know, don't write what the industry
[23:19]says you should be writing, what your agent says you should
[23:22]be writing, what you think you're publisher wants,
[23:24]what you think readers want, write what's in your heart,
[23:27]write what your heart tells you to write.
[23:30]And I think in the long run, you'll be much happier
[23:33]with what you do and with yourself.
[23:36]You know, the river we remember when I was writing it,
[23:39]I just hadn't heard the voice of that story really
[23:41]speak to me in a way that I could do justice to it.
[23:45]But I, because I had a contractual obligation to meet,
[23:48]I really, I worked on it and in the whole time I felt like I
[23:50]was pushing against the river.
[23:53]And as a result, you know, I just botched that early attempt.
[23:57]People think that by the time you're a successful as you can't
[24:00]botched books, you know, like it just doesn't happen.
[24:03]But it does, it's, you know, if you stop challenging yourself
[24:07]as a writer, you're just going to, readers are going to feel that
[24:11]and they'll stop reading you.
[24:12]Yeah, it's true.
[24:13]OK, I know you've already given a lot of advice,
[24:15]but what's one parting piece of advice for aspiring authors?
[24:19]This is the best piece of, I have two pieces of advice to give
[24:24]to aspiring writers.
[24:26]First is this, right because it's what you love to do, not
[24:29]because you think it's going to make you rich and famous.
[24:32]And the second is this, Mary, somebody with a good job.
[24:38]That's great.
[24:40]No one has ever given me that advice before.
[24:44]Can't thank you so much.
[24:45]Thank you for coming on mom's no time to read books.
[24:47]Congratulations on the river we remember.
[24:50]And thank you.
[24:51]I feel like I just took a little trip to the Midwest.
[24:53]So I appreciate it.
[24:55]Well, I have to tell you, I've just had a delightful time.
[24:58]Thank you very much.
[24:59]Oh, good.
[25:00]I'm so glad.
[25:01]All right.
[25:02]I'll tell my mom, you said hello.
[25:03]She's from Ohio, by the way.
[25:05]So I feel like it's a Midwest points for that.
[25:08]There you go.
[25:08]There you go.
[25:09]You take care.
[25:10]OK, bye bye.
[25:12]Thanks for listening to this episode of
[25:14]Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbowens
[25:19]and at moms don't have time to read books.
[25:21]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbowens.com
[25:23]and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:25]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[25:27]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[25:30]for the Sound Editing.
[25:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[25:33]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.