Lightning Strike (Cork O'Connor, #0)

by William Kent Krueger

Do our demons ever go away for good?

“In the absence of evidence, we have faith,

LBJ’s “war on poverty,” electricity and phone service had finally come to the rez, but no running water yet, and outhouses were the norm. There wasn’t much enterprise—Frank’s

“To this world, we listen with our ears,” Meloux said at last. “To the world beyond, we listen with our hearts.

Like many other Ojibwe families, the Downwinds had abandoned the reservation because of the Relocation Act of 1956. Grandma Dilsey had explained the legislation to Cork, an act of Congress that funded relocation of Native families from reservations to certain designated cities. The government paid for the move, promised to help each family find housing, and offered to foot the bill for vocational training, if necessary. On the surface, it seemed like a pretty sweet deal. But Grandma Dilsey had said that it was simply another attempt to eradicate the Native cultures. “They tried blankets tainted with smallpox. They tried guns. They tried boarding schools. Now they’re trying this. It’s all meant to separate us from one another, to wring out of us what makes us who we are. Anishinaabe, Navaho, Dakota, Blackfeet.

“You can’t trust appearances, Cork. People can be awfully good at hiding what they don’t want others to see.”

“Do you know a human being who is not troubled?”

“Would you say that Duncan has some terrible sin weighing on his soul?” “What man doesn’t, Liam, including you?

“Deep in our hearts, I’m not sure any of us really know who we are.

But intentions could be like cloud animals in the sky, so clear for a while, then shifting, then fading, then gone.

“Sometimes I wish things would never change.” “That is like trying to stop the dawn,” Meloux said. “Better, I think, to open yourself to what each new day offers.” “What if it offers only pain, Henry?” Cork’s father said. “In my experience, pain is never the only offering. What we receive depends on what we open our hearts to.” “We’re only human, Henry,” Cork’s father said. “Oh, Liam O’Connor, we are so much more than that.”

“Every heart wants to find peace. In the end, that is the place the Creator takes us.”

“But tonight, around this fire, it is not about trying to understand what awaits us beyond this life. It is about enjoying the gift in this moment together, here under these stars, as the night sings to us.

When the journey ahead takes you to the darkest of places, the joy in these memories will be a part of the light that helps you see your way through. This I promise.”

seems to me more and more, Sam, that we don’t choose our lives. Our lives choose us.’ Then he picked you up and held you against his heart and he said, ‘I’m grateful this life has chosen me.’ ”