From acclaimed author William Kent Krueger comes the seventh profound, action-packed suspense novel in his award-winning Cork O'Conner mystery series.

The promise, as I remember it, happened this way.

Happy and content in his hometown of Aurora, Minnesota, Cork O'Connor has left his badge behind and is ready for a life of relative peace, setting up shop as a private investigator. But his newfound state of calm is soon interrupted when Henry Meloux, the Ojibwe medicine man and Cork's spiritual adviser, makes a request: Will Cork find the son that Henry fathered long ago?

With little to go on, Cork uses his investigative skills to locate HenryWellington, a wealthy and reclusive industrialist living in Thunder Bay, Ontario. When a murder attempt is made on old Meloux's life, all clues pointnorth across the border. But why would Wellington want his father dead? Thisquestion takes Cork on a journey through time as he unravels the story ofMeloux's 1920s adventure in the ore-rich wilderness of Canada, where his lovefor a beautiful woman, far outside his culture, led him into a trap of treachery, greed, and murder.

The past and present collide along the rocky shores of Thunder Bay, where a father's unconditional love is tested by a son's deeply felt resentment, and where jealousy and revenge remain the code among men. As Cork hastens touncover the truth and save his friend, he soon discovers that his own life is indanger and is reminded that the promises we keep - even for the best of friends - can sometimes place us in the hands of our worst enemies.