Murder on the Ridge

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Murder on the Ridge is narrated from the perspective of 13-year-old Will
Samson, who lives just outside Grayson, Alberta, a small white community
adjacent to a Blackfoot reserve. The novel continues the story of racism
introduced in Across the Steel River (2001) and extended by A Dirty Deed
(2003). Now late August 1952, the plot resumes the storyline involving
Old Man Howe and the marriage of Howe’s daughter, Emma, to Wilfred
Black (“Wolfleg”), a Blackfoot. Murder on the Ridge reminds readers
that Howe, in return for Wolfleg’s World War I military enlistment,
had given him title to some land. Wolfleg was killed during the Battle
of Vimy Ridge. Catface, Wolfleg’s 16-year-old grandson, shows his two
closest friends, Will and Arthur, an anonymous letter Emma had received
that suggested Wolfleg had actually been murdered. The youthful trio
want to solve the crime; the “evidence” resides in the past in
France.

With mixed success, Stenhouse uses the device of a sweat lodge to take
Will and Arthur back to April 9, 1917, where they witness Wolfleg being
fatally shot immediately after he saves a man’s life. As both Pots,
the killer, and Joe Warren, the survivor, still reside in Grayson, the
boys intend to use their knowledge to get one of them to confess and
implicate Howe.

Murder on the Ridge can function as a stand-alone read, but those
familiar with the contents of the two previous books will have enriched
understandings of character relationships and motivations. Recommended.