The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

Praise for The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies 'Hills weaves her tale skillfully with a plot as richly textured as her Midwestern landscape. Her characters-untamed, reticent, lonely and proud-are exquisitely rendered in this postwar morality tale.' -Publishers Weekly As 11-year-old Claire Hofer nears the field where her father was raking hay, she sees a skinny, unfriendly-looking stranger scuffling through the stubble toward her. The man is Township Constable John McIntire, and Claire's father is dead. McIntire finds the crime baffling. Reuben Hofer has only lived in the old St. Adele schoolhouse since early May and his family had little contact with anyone in the community save the Catholic priest and Doctor Mark Guibard, who's been attending Hofer's chronically ill, morbidly obese wife. Old acquaintances of the Hofers turn up, but no one seems to have a plausible motive for murder. Soon the spotlight of the murder investigation brings new misery to a family already devastated by misfortune and poverty, and McIntire confronts a fumbling nemesis in the bewildered and frightened, but determined, Claire. Kathleen Hills grew up in rural northern Minnesota, before leaving for a career in Speech/Language Pathology. Determining that ten years in the real world should be all that is demanded of anyone, she turned to writing. In addition to writing mystery, Kathleen is a freelance editor of both fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Minnesota and Aberdeenshire, Scotland. www.kathleenhills.com