GOLDEN CROWN LITERARY SOCIETY GOLDIE WINNER FOR DEBUT NOVEL

Near Iron, Minnesota, waters split along a three-way divide, carrying minerals and contaminants to Hudson Bay, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. Susan B. Ellingson (SB to those who know her) runs a small paper with the help of her best friend and a part-time staff. When a mining company seeks a permit to dig for copper and nickel and store potentially harmful mining waste nearby, SB commits to covering the story, even as she wrestles with financial stress and personal pain. Her dead wife lingers in spirit. Their children have grown and left home, and SB's Labrador provides sweet but insufficient company. Her mother-in-law leads a group of Ojibwe and Métis grandmothers fighting to protect the water, and after an intriguing new woman comes to town, SB isn't sure how to feel or act. When a fiery environmentalist informs her that a local water scientist has gone missing, she follows a trail of evidence from a tiny, off-grid community into a global tangle of lies, corruption, whistleblowing, and danger. 

What people say about Clouded Waters:

" If you’re in the mood for a political thriller that illuminates what’s at stake on the Iron Range and what the Water Protectors are about, rendered in colorful characterizations that run from terrifying to droll, this novel’s for you. Dianna Hunter’s CLOUDED WATERS!"

—Marisha Chamberlain

"I love Clouded Waters. This environmental thriller, plus Sapphic romance and mystery is one of the most intelligent, nuanced, and interesting books I've read in a long time. All the threads are deftly woven through the central character, a Minnesota small town newspaper publisher willing to take on the corporate powers that would pollute rivers along the continental divide. Susan B's personal waters are clouded as well, by grief at the loss of her wife, by their two grown children leaving home, and by the threats to her newspaper and to her life by corrupt mining interests. Sara Pajunen's cover photo of a lone woman looking out over a landscape scarred by an abandoned mining pit is perfect. However, Hunter demonstrates that it takes a community of truth-tellers to confront evil and win--at least temporarily. This struggle is not just the stuff of fine fiction; it still is being waged in northern Minnesota. May those involved be heartened by Dianna Hunter's ode to investigative journalism and her profound understanding of the courage and tenacity needed to protect precious land and unclouded water. And in Susan B's case, to risk falling in love again, one of the sweetest, most restrained, and most redemptive threads in Clouded Waters. 5 Stars of course."

—Nancy Manahan

"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, Mystery Writers of America Grand Master

"Grieving the death of her partner and adjusting to the departure from home of their college-aged children, Susan “SB” Ellingson finds purpose in her work as a fourth-generation newspaper publisher in tiny Iron, Minnesota. When a big corporation proposes a mining operation that would boost the local economy but pollute its water, SB is determined to report the facts. She receives pushback from stakeholders on both sides of the debate: the local miners and county commissioner who want to see the project through, and the environmental activists and Native "Water Grandmothers" who wish to halt it. Her reporting turns dangerous when she gets a tip about the disappearance of a local hydrologist tasked with evaluating the safety of the mining company's proposed waste-storage method. As SB investigates, she uncovers a wide web of corruption. Her discoveries threaten her own safety as well as that of her staff, family, and new love interest. Hunter’s (Wild Mares: My Lesbian Back-to-the-Land Life, 2018) debut novel weaves mystery, romance, and social justice into a beautifully written page-turner. Recommend to fans of Annie Proulx. 

— Lindsay Harmon for ALA's Booklist

"I will admit that I love everything that Dianna Hunter writes. Back in the day, she honed her nonfiction skills in BREAKING HARD GROUND, pulling together devastating testimony from advocates during the farm income crisis. More recently she authored a memoir, WILD MARES, which in my mind established her as a first-rate chronicler of the women’s movement as well as her own life story. So it is no surprise that her new novel, CLOUDED WATERS, combines her deep knowledge about life in rural Minnesota with a well-crafted fictional tale focusing on a woman’s struggle to come to terms with the current crisis of her region and in her personal life.

The story’s lesbian protagonist is the editor and publisher of a small-town newspaper on Minnesota’s Iron Range, where rural neighbors queue up on opposing sides of a divide created by corporate copper-nickel mining interests encroaching on protected watersheds. S.B. (Susan B. Ellington) tries to maintain a professional neutrality while digging for nuggets of fact. This should have been possible, as she has grown up in this exact place and has weathered criticisms about her unconventional family while living in relative harmony with the community and doing her job as a journalist, a role that has been the legacy of her family for generations.

Complicating matters is the grief she feels after the death of her lover Ramona and the empty-nest loneliness she suffers because her two children have left home for their own adult lives. Sure, she has her hilarious colleague and friend Gwen to keep her grounded. And I like that her dog Lil injects a bit of nonjudgmental animal wisdom into her dealings with a local politician. Her world is rocked seismically, however, by the arrival of a newcomer who might have the potential to break open her heart. Meanwhile, she perseveres in her quest to solve the mystery of what happened to a missing water scientist."

—Charlene Brown

"Clouded Waters is Dianna Hunter's first novel but so well made you'd think she'd been writing them all of 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

Sara Pajunen, composer-improviser and audio-visual artist, provided the photo shown on the cover of Clouded Waters. 

Find out more about Sara Pajunen.

Listen to Nicole Olila's recording of my  reading from Clouded Waters at Once Upon A Crime Books on Oct 13,  2023. Find out more. about Once Upon a Crime.