Although this book was originally published in 2021, I had not read it until now. I usually like to read Jess Lourey’s books as they are set in Minnesota. Specifically, they are usually located near where my mother grew up and where my grandparents farmed. What I love about her books, beyond the local flavor, is that Jess Lourey does a lot of historical research before developing her story lines. She must actually live at the Stearns County Historical society in St. Cloud, Minnesota to come across some of the background stories for her books. Bloodline is no exception. Lourey stumbled across a report on KARE11 news about a little boy, Jackie Theel, who had gone missing walking home from his first day of Kindergarten in Paynesville, Minnesota – a small town outside of St. Cloud – in 1944.  He had never been found. When the KARE team investigated, they found that the Stearns County Sheriff’s office, who had investigated the original case, had purged all its files in the 1960’s. Likewise, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in the state had no record of the investigation. However, the boy’s mother had kept the original file number on a report from to the BCA tucked away in her Bible. This case served as Lourey’s inspiration for Bloodline.

The book’s protagonist is Joanie Harkin, an aspiring journalist at the Minnesota Star 1968. After her mother, the only family member she has, passes away and she is mugged in Minneapolis, she agrees to move to Lilydale, Minnesota with him to raise her child. She is newly pregnant and he wants to raise the child in the idyllic community near St. Cloud where he grew up. Idyllic is what Lilydale seems to be—at first. But as Joanie attempts to fit her modern woman personality into the tight knit community things start to seem off – and the intrepid journalist enters into danger on the trail of her first byline.

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