B. L. Blanchard. The Peace Keeper. 47 North, 2022.

I once started to read an alternate history novel about the American Civil War. If I recall correctly, the South won Gettysburg and became independent. I never finished the book. It was just too weird. The generals did not behave the way history portrayed them. It was like reading a Gnostic Gospel.

The Peace Keeper is a different kind of alternate history. It imagines a contemporary North America (it begins in 2020) that was never colonized by Europeans. All the technology we know today is present, but the continent is made up of various countries ruled by and inhabited by Native Americans. The few Europeans there are tourists.

Unlike that alternate history book which took actual events and changed them into something else, this just lets us imagine such a place or such a planet. The people and places all have Indian names. In many cases, the reader can figure them out. The big city in the Chippewa/Ojibwe nation is Shikaakwa. Just saying it out loud shows us it is Chicago. I am happy to say that I was able to identify a number of the Native American words. I did not discover the glossary in the back till I was nearly finished.

Chibenashi has lived all his life in a small village on the shores of a Great Lake, probably northern Lake Michigan. The glossary locates it at Sault Ste. Marie. He is a peace keeper, what in English we call a policeman. There is little crime in the small village. Everyone knows everyone else. He is not very busy except during tourist season, but even then there is mostly petty crime and everyone looks out for everyone else. The police chief usually goes on vacation for most of the winter to Penzacola, i.e. Pensacola, Florida.

Still, Chibenashi’s life has not been without conflict. Twenty years before, when he was seventeen, his mother was murdered on the evening of the big harvest festival. There were many tourists there, but Chibenashi’s father confessed to the murder and has been in prison in Shikaakwa ever since. Chibenashi has had nothing to do with him.

Chibenashi’s younger sister Ashwiyaa, who was twelve at the time, discovered the body and has been traumatized ever since. She is afraid to be alone and trusts no one other than her brother. She tolerates Meoquanee, her mother’s best friend and neighbor, who has done much to take care of both brother and sister.

Chibenashi has never married or traveled much outside of his village. He once had a serious girlfriend, but she realized that if she married, she would be taking on the burden of Ashwiyaa as well. She ended up going to Shikaakwa for college and stayed there for work.

Exactly twenty years later on the same Rice Harvest Festival, Meoquanee is murdered. Chibenashi has to be on duty because of the festival and asks Meoquanee to check up on his sister. Meoquanee never made it to Chibenashi’s wigwam but was murdered in her own wigwam. (The Peace Keeper uses the traditional term wigwam, but it is clear it describes a modern single-family house.)

The uncanny circumstances make Chibenashi think the two murders are somehow related. Obviously, his father is still in prison, but very little investigation was done with his mother’s murder because his father confessed right away. Still, Meoquanee was like a second mother to his family, and he is determined to find out who killed her, even if it means going outside the law.

Much of the story takes place in Chicago. While it is still a big city with tall buildings and distinct neighborhoods, it is clearly Native American. Families will go outside on lawns and parks for campfires. People from various tribes live there. One of the Chicago policemen Chibenashi works with is Miami. Miami is the Chippewa name, Myaamia; they call themselves T’wah T’wah. He carries a sense of resentment like that of other minority groups in other countries. In other words, this alternate world is still like the real world. It is based on Native American culture, yes, but it is no idyll.

Soon the reader has made his or her Coleridgean “willing suspension of disbelief,” and accepts the alien culture as if it were a foreign country with recognizable geographic points. This is, after all, first and foremost a murder mystery. To solve it, Chibenashi has to dig up a lot of his personal roots.

He will have to face his father in prison after twenty years. His former girlfriend has a highly placed job as a Mediator, like a judge in our culture, and she is able to help him, but needless to say it is a little uncomfortable and awkward for both of them.

Solving the crime includes modern technology. Whoever murdered Meoquanee removed all her personal belongings like combs and toothbrushes that might have carried her DNA, but the new DNA analysis on evidence from the old murder reveals some surprising details. Computers and cell phones also figure significantly.

And like any good mystery there are lots of surprises and plot twists. To say much more would turn this review into a spoiler, but it is very entertaining. With the effects the murders have had on Chibenashi’s family, his distressed sister, the old memories surfacing, and new challenges appearing almost daily, the story is quite intense.

We accept the revised history without question because nothing much is explained. This is just the way it is. I was thinking that all three of those modern inventions and discoveries came from North America by descendants of European settlers. The name Watson figures in all three: J. D. Watson for DNA, T. J. Watson for computers, and Thomas Watson for the telephone.

I was happy to observe that in this alternate North America the Passenger Pigeons still darken the skies for days during their migrations; nevertheless, there were national rivalries. The Chippewa did not trust the Lakota nation to the west of them. Historically, the Sioux were originally woodland Indians north of the Great Lakes. They were driven to the plains when the Cree obtained European weapons and drove them out. In The Peace Keeper they ended up on the plains as well. Again, we accept the history.

I could go on telling how I did have fun trying to decipher the meaning of some of the different words before I discovered the glossary. One minor character was a woman named Kishkadee. We are told she was named for the bird. Since this is set in the upper Midwest, it is clearly what in English is the Chickadee. But there is a bird found in Texas and in much of Latin America called the Kiskadee. A doodem is clearly a variation of totem. The usual greeting is boozhoo. That makes me wonder about things, though, like with the Watsons. The Great Lakes were the trade routes for French explorers and voyageurs. That greeting sounds an awful lot like bonjour.