Slacks for Ella Funt

This is how to write literary fiction with a mystery plotline without it seeming like mediocre genre fiction. The primary story is about trying to find out who killed a former fur trader, but there’s no “detective” and all of the characters are fully fleshed out. Penney has many additional plotlines, and tells chapters from the point of view of multiple characters. It was probably really too many plotlines and too many points of view, but I was actually sucked into the book too much to care. Penney also manages to really give the feeling of the bleak land and the bitter cold—exactly what I wanted in the middle of New York summer.