Every cloak rolled in blood

Review by Booklist Review

Drawing poignantly on the death of his daughter Pamala (discussed in a moving introduction), Burke picks up the story of Aaron Broussard Holland decades after the events of Another Kind of Eden (2021). Now a successful novelist in his 80s, living on a farm near Missoula, Montana, Holland is grieving the sudden death of his daughter, Fannie Mae, while trying to help a young man, Jack Wetzel, who is entangled in the opioid subculture. These efforts generate conflict with the region's meth kingpin as well as with a former Klansman, but, at the same time, Holland is confronted with forces beyond the realm of the living, which is no surprise for a man who doesn't discount "the possibility that unseen entities exist just the other side of our fingertips." The ghost of Fannie Mae appears and offers counsel, but there are other, less-kindly supernatural visitors, including Major Eugene Baker, who was responsible for the massacre of more than 200 Blackfeet Indians in 1870, on land near Holland's farm. As the circle of evil closes in on Holland and Native American policewoman Ruby Spotted Horse, Burke rolls together the driving themes that have dominated his work--the inescapable presence of evil, the restorative power of love, the desecration of the planet, humanity's long slouch toward Armageddon--into an intensely, heartrendingly personal exploration of grief.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

At the start of this stunning supernaturally tinged entry in MWA Grand Master Burke's long-running Holland family saga (after 2021's Another Kind of Eden), a teenage boy spray paints a swastika on the barn of octogenarian author Aaron Holland Broussard in rural Montana. Broussard's interactions with the teen lead him into conflict with a host of villains, including evangelical bikers and a meth dealer who has been known to bury people alive. On the side of the angels is Ruby Spotted Horse, the state trooper who responds to his call about the graffiti and who, it turns out, is also entrusted with keeping the malevolent Old People from escaping their confinement beneath her house. Broussard's other ally is his dead daughter, Fannie Mae, who appears from time to time to just converse or to bring him warnings. Setting aside the ghosts, this is one of those extraordinary crime novels that feels more like real life, with incidents and people that aren't obviously connected piling up in the protagonist's life, rather than a neat set of clues pointing to a culprit. Once again, Burke uses genre fiction to plumb weighty issues, both social and emotional. Agent: Anne-Lise Spitzer, Philip G. Spitzer Literary. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

After the death of his daughter, a depressed, grief-stricken Aaron Holland Broussard is forced to adopt the serenity prayer and acknowledge he must accept the things he cannot change. His daughter, Fannie Mae, has passed, but her spirit lingers to guide him as he navigates hate, racism, misogyny, fanatical religion, and manifestations. In Montana, where the long and wide landscape promises open skies and freedom, Broussard sees dark, troublesome shadows, a revelation of what was and still is the brutality of human existence. Evil is manifested as Major Eugene Baker, who commanded the massacre of many Blackfeet people in 1870. Clarity is Ruby Spotted Horse, a Montana state trooper who holds evil at bay behind a door in her cellar. And hope is Fannie Mae, who precedes him in the afterlife and ensures him there is much he can still do, must do. Broussard encounters many of the same stylized characters as he did in Burke's three previous novels of the "Holland Family Saga" series. Narrator Will Patton brings Burke's world to life with casual but masterful confidence. VERDICT A heavy-handed but well-written addition to the series that is drawn from the author's own experience of unexpectedly losing a daughter.--Laura Brosie

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

More or less retired to Montana, SF author Aaron Holland Broussard is faced with a series of crimes evidently committed by someone who's been dead for more than a hundred years. Aaron, now 85, has been haunted by the specter of his daughter, Fannie Mae, ever since she succumbed to alcohol, Ambien, and unsuitable men at the relatively tender age of 54. All he wants is to be left in peace on his homestead near the Flathead Reservation. Instead, he sees resentful neighbor John Fenimore Culpepper and his son, Leigh, painting a swastika on his barn door. Soon after he reports the outrage to State Trooper Ruby Spotted Horse and Sister Ginny Stokes, pastor of the New Gospel Tabernacle, stops off to repaint his door, he gets an unwelcome visit from Clayton and Jack Wetzel, a pair of meth-head brothers looking for trouble. Clayton's problems end when he's found dead near the railroad tracks, and Aaron tries to assuage Jack's by giving him some work around his place and treating him with unaccustomed decency. But Aaron himself is more and more troubled, not only because two cafe waitresses are killed in separate incidents, but because his visitations from Fannie Mae are supplemented by increasingly painful visions of Maj. Eugene Baker, who ordered a historic massacre of the Native Americans living on the land in 1870. The arrival of murderous meth dealer Jimmie Kale, a familiar Burke type, convinces Aaron that "Baker had the power to commit crimes in the present"--and that present-day America offers him unique avatars and opportunities to do so. Less mystery than history, less history than prophecy, and all the stronger for it. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One Chapter One I GAZE UPON THE season from my veranda and know all too well its gaseous vapors and fading colors and deceptive embrace. An orange sun hangs in the cottonwoods down by the river, backdropped by the razored peaks of the Bitterroot Mountains. For me, the sun's lack of warmth is a harbinger of our times, or at best a sign of our collective ephemerality. But please don't be taken aback. Age is not kind, and it leaves a mean stamp on an elderly man's perceptions. A red Ford F-150 pulls to a stop on the dirt track between my barn and the river. There's a bullet hole in the back window, frosted around the edges like a crisp of ice. A gangly teenage boy vaults over the tailgate and can-sprays a black swastika on the door of my barn. His stomach is flat as a plank, his hair grown over his ears. He pisses in my cattle guard while rotating his head on his neck, his urine flashing in the sunlight. I walk down the slope, the air damp and tannic from the decomposition of leaves. The boy climbs back into the bed of the pickup and bangs his fist on the cab's roof. The driver wears a red cap. A man in the passenger seat turns his head slowly toward me, his salt-and-pepper hair scalped around the ears, his face insentient, perhaps hardened by the elements or a life ill chosen. A beer can rests on the dashboard. The truck drives away, swaying in the potholes. "You don't belong here!" the boy shouts, trying to keep his balance, a childlike grin on his face, one that seems incongruent with the nature of his visit. "Go somewhere else!" He shoots me the bone, his free hand cupping his package. A HALF HOUR LATER a state police trooper gets out of her cruiser with a clipboard and fits on her campaign hat. She brushes her nose with the back of her wrist, as is our wont during the virus that has changed our culture. She can't be over five-two. Her hair is thick, the color of slate, her skin tanned, her eyes recessed and bright and happy like those of a young girl who is curious about the world. She asks me to tell her everything that happened. When I finish, she makes no comment, and I wonder if I have overestimated her. "My description doesn't help much?" I said. "You didn't get a tag number?" "There was mud on the plate." "The dispatcher said you've had trouble out here before," she says. "Kids who threw a sack of pig guts in my yard." "Why would anyone want to paint a swastika on your barn?" she says. "They don't like me?" She puffs one cheek, then the other, as though rinsing her mouth. "I called 911 because I'm required to do so by my insurance company," I say. "I appreciate your coming out. I doubt anything will come of this, so let's forget it." "How about giving me a chance to do my job?" "Sorry." "How old are you?" "Eighty-five. Why do you ask?" "You don't look it." "It's Dorian Gray syndrome." She looks into space, then at the two vehicles parked among the maple trees in my front yard. "You live with others?" "I'm a widower." "That's not what I asked." "I live by myself." "You look like Sam Shepard. You know, the actor?" I don't reply. For many people who have had a recent personal loss, superficial conversation has an effect like an emery wheel grinding the soul into grit. The swastika on my barn door seems to become uglier and more intrusive as the day grows colder and more brittle, like winter light on a grave. "Hello?" she says. "Yes?" "I mentioned Sam Shepard as a compliment. Know any white supremacists hereabouts?" "I've seen some people at the grocery and the PO with AB tats." "Where did you hear about the Aryan Brotherhood?" "Bumming around." "You didn't try to take a picture of the truck or the kid shooting you the finger?" "I don't have a cell phone." "You're the writer, aren't you?" "I'm 'a' writer." "I think there's something you're not telling me, Mr. Broussard. I think you stirred up some white supremacists. I've seen your letters to the editor." "White supremacists don't read the editorial page." "Can I make a suggestion?" "Why not?" "Stay away from these guys. They're not just racists. They mule the meth that gets brought into the res from Denver and Billings. I don't think the high number of murdered and missing Montana Indian women is coincidence, either. Are you listening, sir?" "These guys who sprayed my barn weren't dope mules. They're leftover nativists. They think their time has rolled around again." "Nativists? You're not talking about Indians?" "Nope." She takes a business card from her shirt pocket and writes on it and hands it to me. "That's my cell number on the back." "Why the special treatment?" "You read Oscar Wilde." "Pardon?" "You mentioned Dorian Gray. I assume you know who wrote the novel." The skin on my face shrinks. "I read one of your books," she says. "I think you're a nice man, Mr. Broussard. But you need to take care of yourself. There's some mean motor scooters down in the Bitterroots." The name on her card is Ruby Spotted Horse. "Officer, I didn't mean--" I start. She gets in the cruiser and starts the engine and hooks on a pair of yellow-brown aviator glasses, then rolls down the window. "Did you lose your daughter recently?" "Yes, I did." "I'm sorry for your loss, sir." She looks in her outside mirror. "Watch out. I don't want to run over your foot." I nod but don't speak, which is what I do when others mention my daughter's death. I still haven't dealt with her loss, and I probably never will. Ruby Spotted Horse makes a U-turn and drives down the dirt lane, the sun's reflection wobbling like an orange balloon trapped inside her rear window. Excerpted from Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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