Chloe Ellefson encounters more mayhem than you might imagine for a curator at Old World Wisconsin. Fortunately for all of us, Chloe is a fictional character, and the murders she helps unravel are also fictitious.
The latest installment in the series featuring Chloe and her love interest, the police officer Roelke McKenna, is called Tradition of Deceit by author Kathleen Ernst. It finds Chloe working on a murder in Minneapolis, while Roelke is trying to solve a grisly crime in Milwaukee.
There’s also a third plot underlying the book playing out in the Midwest a century ago.
Author Kathleen Ernstspoke to Lake Effect's Mitch Teich recently about her latest novel, and explained how she chose the focus of the novel.
"In this book I really wanted to look at the whole issue of power," Ernst says. "Who has power, what will people do to get power, what will people do to hang on to their power? And that can be very broadly defined."
Kathleen Ernst lives in Middleton and is also the author of numerous historical novels for the American Girl series.
