BLOWN BY THE SAME WIND

Think nothing could possibly make Cold Storage, Alaska, any goofier? Think again.

The summer of 1968 brings five new arrivals to the little fishing village. The first is a rash of burglaries—nothing too serious but more than a nuisance and well outside the competence of George Hanson, the Seattle cop who followed barkeeper Ellie Hobbes and boat keeper Slippery Wilson to Cold Storage and settled there as an unofficial lawman. The second is Brother Louis, a Trappist monk sent forth from Gethsemane, Kentucky, to dim the publicity his Cistercian monastery has gained from the books he’s published as Thomas Merton. The third is FBI agent, or maybe ex-agent, Boston Corbett, who’s traveled there to have a word with Brother Louis about his possible Communist sympathies. The fourth and fifth are George Atzerodt and Ed Spangler, a pair of racist agitators bent on recruiting equally weak-minded souls to their visionary cause and acquiring the Old General, a mummy Ellie grew up with back in the Haywood Saloon. Word on the streets is that the Old General’s remains are actually those of actor/assassin John Wilkes Booth, and the insurrectionists think they’d be an inspiration to the followers they hope to enlist. It’s hard for the Cold Storage natives to keep up with this many star-crossed arrivals, but Straley assigns a memorable role to Venus Myrtle, a 16-year-old who inspires mystical dreams in Brother Louis and straight-up lust in the sons of the Confederacy. Fans of this loopy series, licking their lips in anticipation of the ensuing complications, won’t expect everything to be tied up in a neat bundle, and it isn’t.

Resonant 1968 memories, racist conspiracies, Zen-like mysticism, and the reliably off-kilter takes of the regulars. Perfect.