Native American novel gives new life to the dead of Lake Superior
Craig A. Brockman’s Dead of November is a supernatural thriller that will leave readers spellbound with Native American lore, ghostly apparitions, exotic location, and homage to lost love. Set in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, one of the oldest cities in the Midwest on the shores of Lake Superior, the novel draws on the city’s historical heritage as an ancient Native American gathering place in St. Mary’s Rapids, later the site of Fort Brady, and today home to the Soo Locks and a Native American-owned casino. All of these places figure into history, mixing the past with the present in a whirlwind of confusion about what is real, what is legend, and what results when the two merge into a new reality.
The story begins when his former colleague, Ron, asks Adam Knowles, a psychiatrist practicing in Lower Michigan, to return to Sault Sainte Marie to help out at the clinic there. Adam is forced to leave, although he knows that it will mean facing his difficult past, in which he drowned the love of his life and in which he earned a reputation in town for helping people who believed they saw ghosts. . Little does Adam know that people are seeing ghosts again, which is why Ron wants him back.
Ron arranges for Adam to stay at an old inn in Sault owned by Maggie, a Scotswoman who is attuned to the supernatural. Adam also has a friend, Cam, who reappears in his life at this time. Cam went crazy years before, though Adam isn’t quite sure why. Now Cam is apparently hallucinating: he sees apparitions of Native American warriors from the past, among other things.
Adam begins to realize that something sinister is going on when Maggie is visited by a Potawatomi medicine man from out of the area named James Graves. Graves has built a following among certain members of the local Ojibwa tribe, but he also appears to be trying to stir up trouble. Maggie and Graves have a private meeting which makes Adam curious about Graves’s intentions. He hopes to get answers when Graves invites him to a private meeting at the casino. Adam is shocked by what he discovers at the meeting and further shocked to find himself in a semi-conscious state that makes him suspect that he has been drugged. Fortunately, a young woman who works at the casino, Gracie Bird, is also suspicious of Graves and comes to Adam’s rescue.
As the novel progresses, the characters learn more about Graves and the myriad of ghost sightings experienced by local residents. They soon discover that Graves is trying to unleash a legendary horror, which would have dire consequences for everyone if he succeeds.
Brockman writes knowingly about everything he includes in this book, from psychiatry to local history to Ojibwa lore. She has lived and worked in Sault Sainte Marie with Lake Superior State University and the Indian Health Service, becoming involved in the area she has chosen for his subject matter.
Although the novel is full of the supernatural, it never falls into being cheesy or cheesy. The dead of Lake Superior are not ordinary zombies, but apparitions that need explanations. All the characters are well developed, many of them having pasts that need healing or that inform their actions in the novel.
What impressed me most was Brockman’s use of Native American lore. He has clearly researched everything from Ojibwa history to local archeology to superstition. I learned a lot about the native culture from this book, all presented in a way that is always entertaining and relevant to the plot. Brockman’s ability to blend the supernatural with reality is especially impressive, making the reader’s suspension of disbelief never waver as we transition from a dangerous climactic moment to a tender discussion of forgiveness, all fueled by a heightened sense that what we know as reality may only be a veil to a larger metaphysical world we barely understand.
Dead of November is the kind of book you can get so engrossed in that you have to stop to remind yourself that it’s just a story, and even when you close the book, the moaning waves of Lake Superior will still follow you. I wish there were more like this.