Clouded Waters: A Novel

“More than just a whodunit, Dianna Hunter’s compelling new novel, Clouded Waters, takes us deep into the Minnesota north country, where the combustible mix of environmental values and the needs of business and local employment vie with each other, producing hot-blooded emotions with deadly results. Combining both mystery and romance, Hunter gives us a story that speaks to many of the deepest divisions in America today. Highly recommended.”-Ellen Hart, author of the Jane Lawless Mystery Series

“Clouded Waters is Dianna Hunter’s first novel but so well made you’d think she’d been writing them all her life. Set in a small city on Minnesota’s Iron Range, the story revolves around the conflict between an international corporation’s desire to open a copper-nickel mine versus the will of a local newspaper’s publisher to tell the whole truth to her community. Right alongside this fraught storyline, Hunter runs multiple other lines of suspense: family grief and friction, a missing person, a new woman in town, and more. The miracle is that Hunter handles all these issues at least as well as her main character handles the reins of her horse. Everything is deftly dramatized. The style is fresh and clean. Few mystery novels raise questions as significant and beautifully put as this one: ‘In a universe where stars eat other stars and whole solar systems slide into black holes, what chance did love have?’ “–Bart Sutter, author of My Father’s War: Stories of Midwestern Men

“I’ve been familiar with Dianna Hunter’s work since her graduate school days. She writes a direct but evocative prose laced with dry humor and is committed to combining social issues with personal relationships. In Clouded Waters, she has brought these skills to a new level, weaving romance, mystery and the issues of mining in the Iron Range, including its effect on Indigenous people. Bravo.”--Linda Morganstein, author of MY LIFE WITH STELLA KANE

Dianna Hunter is the author of two nonfiction books, Wild Mares: My Lesbian Back-to-the-Land Life (University of Minnesota Press) and Breaking Hard Ground: Stories of the Minnesota Farm Advocates (Holy Cow! Press). Both were finalists for the Minnesota Book Award. Her short fiction, journalism, essays, and book reviews have appeared in national and regional publications, including the In These Times – Rural America blog, the Rural Women’s Studies Association blog, Peregrine, Feminist Collections, Hurricane Alice, and Earth Matters. A former farmer and retired teacher of writing and women’s studies, she currently writes, gardens, and forages in the rocky green spaces of Duluth, Minnesota, where she lives with her wife, Deb.

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