Audiobook Reveiw: The Levee by William Kent Krueger

The Levee

by William Kent Krueger (Compact Disc Krueger)

 

The Levee is a newly-released, but somewhat older title from William Kent Krueger, author of the long-running Cork O’Connor series, set in Minnesota, and the stellar stand-alones Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land. As Krueger mentions in an author afterword at the end of this audiobook, The Levee was a title he’d written many years before, but never done anything with — he’s kept coming back to it again and again, to rewrite and polish what he’d done before. And, finally, during COVID-19 self-isolation periods in the past couple of years, he finally finished it.

 

The Levee has been released only as an audiobook, narrated by J.D. Jackson. It is a novella in length, taking up only 3 discs as a book-on-cd. Based on an actual historical event, The Levee is set during the historic flooding of the Mississippi River in 1927, as four men (a former priest and three convicts ordered to assist him) journey by rowboat through the flood waters to the ancestral home of family, temporarily encircled by a levee built to withstand the flood waters.

 

Everyone in this story has their own motives and emotional connection to the attempt to save this stranded family — some noble and others less so. Krueger’s character-building skills are in full view in this short work, and I was pulled into the story quickly, finding myself invested in the (hopefully) successful outcome of the quest.

 

If you’re a fan of Krueger’s stand-alone novels, mentioned above, I recommend this short “new” work to you. One bonus with this audiobook is that includes an advance preview of Krueger’s forthcoming new novel, The River We Remember (due out in the Fall of 2023).

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land, both by William Kent Krueger, or No One Goes Alone, an audio-original novella by Erik Larson.)

 

( official William Kent Krueger web site )

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!