Review: Witch Cradle

Author Kathleen Hills has a history with regions of the northern United States, and although the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is separate and distinct, from, say Montana or Northern Wisconsin, there are certainly similarities. In this third outing for the author's protagonist, the reluctant constable of St. Adele, John McIntire, comes across evidence that two former neighbors had not emigrated to the Soviet Union, as was supposed by pretty much everybody in the region.

In the early 1930's this country was in the grip of a serious depression and there was more than a little unrest. Some people organized a sort of mass emigration by mostly poor or disaffected people to a place in the Soviet Union called Karelia. Karelia was touted as the people's Eden, a place where everyone would be well- housed, properly fed and would find useful work, according to their needs. Karelia was advertised as sort of the penultimate socialist community. In reality, a lot of people who went, disappeared and were never heard from again. What was their fate in Stalinist Russia?

WITCH CRADLE, is set in the early fifties, a time when suspicion of that great evil, Communism, also known as the Soviet Union, was rampant in this country. It was the time of Roy Cohen and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. It was a time of black listing and anxiety. And while the people of the Upper Peninsula were relatively isolated from most of the excesses of that time, there were those who would take advantage of the circumstances. Bringing those national concerns down to the individual and very personal concerns of the people of St. Adele is a feat worth reading about, especially in the careful and adept hands of author Kathleen Hills.

Many questions rise. What is the FBI doing hanging around this isolated area? What exactly was Constable McIntire doing during his time away from St. Adele, the time he refuses to talk about? What exactly did happen to the people who went to the Soviet Union? And if some of the former residents of the area never made it to Karelia, what happened to them and why? This is a moving, solid work about people we all can relate to, in one form or another.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Carl Brookins - RAM

Book Review: Witch Cradle