TREMPEALEAU

Umhoefer’s debut novel blends elements of SF, mystery, and apocalyptic thrillers in a storytelling tour de force set largely in and around dairy farms in rural Elk Creek, Wisconsin.

After the crew of Skylab 4 noticed a massive circular structure in the snow-covered ground near Minneapolis in the winter of 1974, a few curious adventurers began researching the elusive geological phenomenon on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. Local teenager Paul Meadows and his friend Pete Flottmeier roamed the bluffs looking for the mysterious circle—that is, until Pete mysteriously went missing. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse geology professor Lawrence Marten, an expert on the area’s landscape, realized that the land had a secret that some residents of Elk Creek were willing to kill for. Later, in 2003, almost three decades after the mention of the circle on Skylab 4’s transcript, Jennifer von Guericke, a mission management team chair for NASA, comes back to her hometown of Elk Creek after she learns that her estranged mother has died. As she deals with the fact that “seven astronauts…died on her watch just ten weeks ago,” she investigates a grand-scale government conspiracy that dates to World War II, multiple possible murders, and a mythical portal to another universe. Meadows, now a mentally unstable middle-aged man who’s still obsessed with finding his friend, and Marten, now an 86-year-old retired professor, help von Guericke understand the unfathomably deep—and deadly—secrets of the area. Overall, the brilliance of this novel lies in the way in which the author draws out the mystery, leading readers along with a winding trail of breadcrumbs that slowly reveals the jaw-dropping truth. Solid character development and relentless pacing are among the novel’s obvious strengths, as is its focus on description, which makes the land of western Wisconsin come alive on the page, as when Jennifer’s elderly neighbor notes how “the scents of warm earth, wood fires, and even manure spread on fields were familiar.” It’s the sheer audaciousness of the story that powers this page-turning novel, which offers some bombshell plot twists.

An unpredictable and surprising thriller.