Ya-Ling Tsai
The Wisconsin that Madison-based author John Galligan depicts in Bad Axe County (Atria Books) is not one that state Department of Tourism officials will appreciate.
This grim and gritty thriller set on the edge of the Mississippi River pulsates with the unholy trinity of meth addiction, sex trafficking and murder.
This is a brutal read, which has won early praise from Publishers Weekly and bestselling author William Kent Krueger — who aptly called Bad Axe County “a dark beauty of a novel, nothing less than a mythic conflict between flawed heroes and gargantuan evil.”
It unearths the seediness of life in rural Wisconsin, and its vivid depictions of sexual abuse will stick with you. At its core, the book explores the awful lengths to which men (and women) will go to seek revenge, destroy their enemies, and save their own asses.
Consider yourself warned.
When Heidi Kick, a former Wisconsin Dairy Queen who traveled the state promoting milk and cheese, is named interim (and the first female) sheriff of rural Bad Axe County, the tough mother of three immediately sparks love-her-or-hate-her dissent in a community ruled by a feisty, decades-old good-old-boys network.
As a spring snowstorm bears down, the new sheriff finds herself in pursuit of a missing teenage Ho-Chunk girl from Wisconsin Dells. An unlikely set of clues involves backwoods stripper parties, the revered local baseball team, and a decrepit salvage yard, which has hidden the body of a dead teenage girl for years.
While the majority of this bleak story takes place over two whirlwind days, there also are enough clues for Kick to make some discoveries about the mysterious death of her parents 12 years earlier.
Although you won’t find Bad Axe County on a current map of Wisconsin, Vernon County (located about 90 miles northwest of Dane County) was known as Bad Ax County until 1862. In Galligan’s hands, the fictional Bad Axe County — populated with isolated coulees, dangerous back roads, and lifelong ne’er do wells — emerges as a critical main character.
Sometimes the landscape is more appealing than the despicable people who inhabit Bad Axe County. Save for Sheriff Kick, her wickedly funny dispatcher, and the kidnapped Ho-Chunk girl, there are few people to root for here. But the compulsion to keep reading, with the hope that good will ultimately triumph over evil, is almost irresistible.
That said, readers might be disappointed by the incomplete conclusion, as not all of the multiple plot lines in this complex story converge at the end. But Galligan, a UW-Madison graduate who teaches writing at Madison College, still delivers a memorable tale on which he could anchor a new series.
He also introduces some of the most intriguing character names you’re bound to find in a novel this year, including Angus Beavers, Pepper Greengrass, Ladonna Weeks and Baron Ripp.
Galligan has upcoming appearances scheduled at Mystery to Me on July 11 at 7 p.m. and the Fitchburg Public Library on Aug. 17 at 2 p.m.
