Women Writing the West WILLA Award Finalist From "the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries" (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century Deadwood When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America. The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland's potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul-or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed. Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue's new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.

"My grandmother, Mae Kirwin, scared me". With that disturbing, distant memory mystery novelist Mary Logue begins her exploration of the life of her mother's mother, who died when Logue was nine years old. Mae McNally Kirwin was born in 1894 in Chokio, a small prairie community in western Minnesota. In 1926, the sudden death of her husband left Mae to support herself and her five children. She took a job as postmaster of Chokio, where she lived until her death in 1961. These straightforward facts are not enough for Logue. Who was Mae Kirwin? What was it like to live in her world? Determined to get to know her grandmother better, Logue sets out to discover and assemble the bits and pieces of her grandmother's life. In the process, Logue takes the reader - and herself - on a journey of discovery. Digging through forgotten bank records, old newspapers, handwritten census forms, family documents, and faded recipes, she pieces together the past. Interviews with the few surviving family members who knew Mae bring vitality to the bare facts. Logue slowly brings into focus a portrait of Mae Kirwin, immersing us in a lifetime that began with horse-drawn carriages and ended in a freak auto accident. Along the way, she tells a much larger story - that of a community, a way of life, a family, and a single woman's struggle to survive in a world that is both harsh and richly rewarding.

A grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881 After the harrowing events that entangled her in Deadwood, Brigid Reardon just wants to move west and get on with her new life in America. But shortly after traveling to Cheyenne to join her brother Seamus, she finds herself caught up in another deadly mystery-beginning with her discovery of a neighbor's body on the plains near their homes. Was Ella murdered? Are either of the two men in Ella's life responsible? With Seamus away on a cattle drive, her friend Padraic possibly succumbing to a local's charms, and the sheriff seemingly satisfied with Ella's fate, it falls to Brigid to investigate what really happened, which puts her in the crosshairs of one of Cheyenne's cattle barons, called "big sugars" in these parts. All she really wants is something better than a crumbling, soddy homestead on the desolate plains of Wyoming-and maybe, just maybe, she wants Padraic-but life, it seems, has other plans: this young immigrant from Ireland is going to be a detective on the western frontier of 1880s America, even if it kills her. Loosely based on the true story of Ellen Watson in Cheyenne in 1889, The Big Sugar continues the adventure begun in Mary Logue's celebrated mystery The Streel, which introduced a "gritty, charming, clever protagonist" (Kirkus Reviews). With a faultless sense of history, a keen eye for suspense, and a poet's way with prose, Mary Logue all but guarantees that readers, like Brigid, will find the mystery at the heart of The Big Sugar downright irresistible.

In Heart Wood poet Mary Logue gives the reader a close examination of the wonderful ordinariness of life in clear and simple language. She asks one to "stand on the earth" and listen, to witness the miracle of a lamb being born, and shows the magic of floating on water. In these poems, she encourages us to live in the heart of this world, realistically to "know how bad it can be and how good." Having homes on both sides of the Mississippi river in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Logue is deeply aware of the natural environment. The landscape of this collection is filled with trees, snow, rivers, flowers, and "wars and weddings." We are presented with the many ways people move through the world as we watch people quilt, stare at a lunar eclipse, or doze with a small dog on their lap. With a warm fire burning while drinking verbena tea the books ends, giving us a deep awareness of all the has happened, at the close of another day. She reminds us it is our duty to "wring every drop of joy" out of this life we have been given, whatever form it takes.

Women Writing the West WILLA Award Finalist From "the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries" (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century Deadwood When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America. The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland's potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul-or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed. Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue's new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.

2013 Randolph Caldecott Honor Award
In this magical bedtime story, the lyrical narrative echoes a "Runaway Bunny - "like cadence: "Does everything in the world go to sleep?" the little girl asks. In sincere and imaginative dialogue between a not-at-all sleepy child and understanding parents, the little girl decides "in a cocoon of sheets, a nest of blankets," she is ready to sleep, warm and strong, just like a tiger. The Caldecott Honor artist Pamela Zagarenski's rich, luminous mixed-media paintings effervesce with odd, charming details that nonsleepy children could examine for hours. A rare gem.

Wisconsin winter weather plays as important a role as any individual in this nicely paced tale of domestic abuse and murder. Claire Watkins is still adjusting to life in little Fort St. Antoine when she notices the bruises and stiff gait of a local woman named Stephanie Klaus. Small town or big city, Claire knows the signs of abuse when she sees them.

Stephanie, however, won't talk, even when her new boyfriend, Buck, is tied into his car, driven out on the treacherous ice of Lake Pepin and left there to sink and drown.

When Stephanie, accompanied by Buck's delightful dog, Snooper, tries to leave town, she is once again beaten; this time, she barely survives. . . .

This first in a series launch introduces Claire Watkins, a deputy sheriff for the Pepin County Police Department. Claire, a former Minneapolis police detective, and her 10-year-old daughter Meg fled the Twin Cities after her husband, Steve, also a cop, was killed.

When Landers Anderson--an elderly neighbor who befriended Claire and Meg--dies of a heart attack after being sideswiped with a shovel, Claire determines to find the culprit. This involves delving into Landers's family history and investigating the machinations of a right-wing group, Homeowners of America, that is buying up property to build an environmentally unsound development.

At the same time, Meg fearfully admits to Claire that she saw the man who killed Steve. Claire contacts her former partner, Det. Bruce Jacobs, and prods him into accelerating the investigation into Steve's death.

Claire Watkins, deputy sheriff of Pepin County, Wis., makes a strong second showing that ought to gain her new fans. In spite of recurrent panic attacks associated with the death of her husband, Claire is starting to find the peace and security she's been seeking for herself and her 10-year-old daughter, Meg, since leaving her promising career with the St. Paul-Minneapolis police department for the small bluff town of St. Antoine.

One summer evening, while her sister Bridget takes care of Meg, Claire and Rich Haggard, a local pheasant farmer she's been dating for three months, attend a street dance in nearby Little Rock. Just as the fun gets under way, screams for help stop the music and put romance on hold. Someone has stabbed well-liked farmer Jed Spitzler in the chest. Members of the close-knit St. Antoine community join Jed's children in searching for Jed's killer.

Long-hidden town secrets are revealed as Claire seeks the truth and continues to struggle with her own demons.