The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger is a fantastic literary historical fiction piece of work. It explores some of the racial problems we face today but focuses mainly on the Native Americans in a small town in Jewel, Minnesota. While the story takes place a little after World War II, racial issues are once again proven to be resilient against time. I found myself glued to the story from the very start. And all it took was for the folks of Black Earth County to discover one of their own had fallen victim to the Alabaster River to get things started.

Like any great literary novel, I found The River We Remember to be an extremely easy read. The majority of the characters we learn about are flawed in some way or another while the mystery and story unravel chapter by chapter. I usually write much longer reviews when it comes to non-fiction books I’ve completed, but capturing what I felt when reading The River We Remember was a bit difficult, but not in a bad way. For this time, I’ll let others with much more prose do the job instead.