William Kent Krueger visits West Concord

West Concord’s Public Library was filled to capacity May 6 to see New York Times bestselling author William Kent Krueger.

Krueger lives in St. Paul, and is probably best known for his Cork O’Connor mystery series set in Northern Minnesota, and he also has standalone novels with Minnesota settings.

“Call me Kent,” he told the audience and launched into an account of storytelling, which, he explained, is what he does. “I’m called a mystery writer, but I think of myself as a storyteller…The most important words you will ever hear are, ‘let me tell you a story,’” he said.

Stories are linked to libraries in Kent’s worldview. It was a library and a librarian that introduced him to the pleasure of reading. His first library experience occurred when he was 12 years old and a Boy Scout. He wanted to earn a merit badge in reading so he headed for the public library in the small town in Oregon where he grew up.

At that time at the library, books and cards were still stamped with a date stamp when they were checked out, so Kent was given the task of date stamping books for library patrons to check out. After he’d done that for a while, the librarian asked Kent what kind of books he liked to read. Kent didn’t want to tell her that he liked to read comic books. She eventually gave him a copy of “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas, and Kent was hooked on reading. He followed it with “The Three Musketeers,” and moved on to books by Orson Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jack London.

“Libraries are important guides in understanding the world,” Kent said, “they’re the archives of our culture.” Stories entertain, but they also enlighten us, he noted.

Two early stories he read at a very young age that affected the way he lives, both written by Dr. Seuss. In “Horton Hatches an Egg,” he learned, “I meant what I said and I said what I meant, an elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent!” and in “Horton Hears a Who,” “A person’s important, no matter how small.”

Kent said when he pitched the idea for his standalone novel, “Ordinary Grace,” to his publishers at Simon and Schuster, they told him they only wanted Cork O’Connor stories. Kent went ahead and wrote the book, and when he showed it to his editor at Simon and Schuster, she loved it. Simon and Schuster published it in 2013 and it became a bestseller. In 2019 another standalone, “This Tender Land,” was published.

Another standalone novel, “The River We Remember,” is due to come out this year in September. The roots for this book go back several years, Kent said, when he started a story that seemed to have insurmountable problems and would never be published. Recently he went back and re-read what he had started, and at that point the voices of the characters came alive for him, so he was able to finish the story.

In the Cork O’Connor stories, Ojibway characters and culture are often main parts of the story. Kent has Ojibway contacts that he consults as he crafts the stories, including a friend who is a member of the Ojibway Tribal Police. “Some of our European ancestors did what they could to obliterate the Ojibway,” Kent said, “and yet here they are. I have a lot of respect for their culture.”

In answer to a question from the audience, Kent recalled the first book he wrote, when he was in the third grade. His father was an English teacher, and often made remarks to the effect that he wished people would consult dictionaries more often, so Kent wrote a book called “The Walking Dictionary.” This dictionary had legs, and it would walk around and show up when people needed to look something up. It was a great hit with Kent’s parents and his third grade teacher.