The Trouble Up North by Travis Mulhauser

Published by Grand Central Publishing on March 11, 2025

The Sawbrook family owns six hundred acres adjacent to Crooked Tree Park in Northern Michigan, but developers want their land. The Sawbrooks live on the edge of society and constantly fight with each other, but they aren’t dysfunctional. Within their limits, they function surprisingly well. The Sawbrooks are a crime family, but the crimes are low-key — brewing moonshine, smuggling cigarettes into Canada — and the Sawbrooks take pride in never being caught. Although they spend much of their time on the river, they are equally proud that no Sawbrook ever died by drowning.

Rhoda’s grandfather was “not well after the war,” a diagnosis that explains his decision to plant land mines in the woods to kill as many invaders as possible when they came for him. Rhoda’s father placed barbed wire around the mined land, although an occasional black bear tears down the fence and explodes while trying to snack on berries.

Rhoda’s husband is living with lung cancer. He would like to die but Rhoda can’t bear the thought of living without him. Their daughter Lucy is a park ranger. She's the only Sawbrook with an education and the only one who has any interest in obeying the law.

Rhoda gave equal parcels of the family land to her three children. Lucy sold her share to an environmental trust for $20,000 to keep it from being developed, causing Rhoda to complain that she gave it to communists — i.e., the conservation group that purchased the land.

Lucy paid her sister Jewell $20,000 so she could sell Jewell’s share of the land to the trust, but Jewell promptly lost the cash in a high-stakes poker game in Vegas, thwarting her hope of doubling her money and buying the land back. Lucy spent half the cash she received from the trust on treatment for her alcoholic brother Buckner. She regards that investment as a waste when Buckner goes off the wagon after hearing bad news about his stripper girlfriend.

Against that background, a story unfolds, although the plot is an excuse to explore the family dynamic. A man named Van Hargrave offers Jewell $10,000 (but only $1,000 up front) to set his boat on fire. Hargrave says he wants to collect the insurance. Hargrave runs poker games in his garage and promises to set up a game with high rollers that will allow Jewell to win more money than she lost in Vegas.

Jewell manages to burn the boat but the fire spreads to the forest. As Lucy evacuates campers from the park, she spots Jewell running through the woods and gives chase. They both end up in the river, creating the risk that one of them will be the first Sawbrook to drown — or to be captured after a crime. Buckner enters the mix by getting drunk and stealing an ATV from the park rangers. Lucy spots him as she’s chasing Jewell.

The Trouble Up North blends a crime story with a family drama. At the end, it becomes a story of enduring love. Travis Mulhauser crafts a fast-moving plot that will capture the reader’s attention, but characterization is the novel’s strength.

Buckner is a veteran but he doesn't blame war for his alcoholism. “Buckner had always been a drinker but it really picked up after he got back from Iraq, which people liked to say was because of trauma. Buckner had not been traumatized, but after a while he stopped arguing and just let people believe what they wanted.”

Buckner’s girlfriend has more depth than most fictional strippers. Her relationship with Rhoda showcases two capable women with soft hearts and hard attitudes. They aren’t afraid of bullies.

Lucy and Jewell are at odds through much of the novel. Lucy’s job is to enforce the law (at least within the park). Will Lucy notify the authorities that her sister started the fire? Someone may have died in the fire, so Lucy worries about her own criminal liability if she protects Jewell. Yet protecting each other is the drive that holds the Sawbrook clan together. How the mess the family members have made of their lives will be resolved is the question that gives the story its tension.

The story is tight. Like Chekov’s Gun, seemingly insignificant details become important later in the narrative. The resolution, like the story that precedes it, is smart and surprising. The Trouble Up North is an easy novel to recommend to fans of literary crime fiction.

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