A Memory of Muskets

the current Chloe Ellefson mystery, following death on the Prairie, is A Memory of Muskets, and it’s the best one yet.

Part of that is due to the connection to author Kathleen Ernst’s own experience. The mysteries are set at Old world Wisconsin in the 1980s, which is when Ernst worked there. This particular mystery involves the murder of a Civil war reenactor, an activity Ernst also participated in (along with her husband). As a result, she does an exceptional job capturing the kinds of worries and motivations that drive people to reenact. It’s a fascinating portrait of a specialized kind of hobby group, with various politics and disputes over authenticity and women’s participation, among lots of other topics and ramifications.

As the story begins, Chloe’s dreadful boss wants a Civil war battle to draw attention. Chloe and her co-workers want to focus a lot more on education and accuracy than flashy events. That’s one conflict.

The other is a lot more personal. Chloe’s boyfriend, a local police officer, has just gotten back his family’s farm, and he wants Chloe to step in with him. one of the outbuildings gives her the willies, though, and she’s not sure how much of it is due to her unspoken worries over moving their relationship forward.

As is normal of lots of novels in this series, the 1980s chapters are interspersed with others set in the period of history relevant to the mystery. Here, it’s the story of Rosina, a young woman immigrating to Wisconsin in 1861 to marry someone she’s never met. However, a shipboard romance changes her life, plus she arrives in her new country just as war breaks out.

Normally, I find these past tales not as interesting as the a lot more recent-day mysteries, and I rush through them to get back to the “main” story. In this case, though, I was as involved in Rosina’s story as Chloe’s. Often, those chapters indicate that the reader knows a lot more about the artifacts Chloe finds than she does, reminding us of how much we can only think of or assume about the past.

The book ends with a few pictures of real artifacts similar to the ones in the story, a great connection between this fiction and the real-world history that inspired it. The author has posted a lot more at her blog. If you’re interested in another living history/reenactment mystery, try The final Reveille.

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