As a teenager, Heidi Kick was sort of an anomaly: a high-achieving train wreck. Maybe a well-liked community nuisance. Coming out of high school, she had to good (or mis) fortune to be crowned Wisconsin’s Dairy Queen, a title that has followed her into adulthood. After a number of fits and starts, she went into law enforcement and when there is an opening for an interim county sheriff, Heidi ends up in charge, to the chagrin of a large chunk of Bad Axe County. She still carries around the burden of the death of her parents maybe 15 years ago; a crime originally recorded as a murder-suicide that Heidi never believed. She’s married to a former high school baseball hero now coach and has three kids.
It's winter in Wisconsin and an ice storm hits SW Wisconsin. A young girl is missing in the storm. Heidi follows what trail she can find and gets pulled into rural stag parties held in abandoned dairy farms and all the crap that can go on at a gathering of thugs. The clues lead not only to a junkyard (and a corpse hidden for a decade) but also to a legendary baseball game her husband pitched. What she finds has the potential to seriously upset longstanding ‘values’ of the county.
Call this Dairy Noir. The story is dark, intense, and quite disturbing because of its misogyny, rape, abuse, hero worship, family feuds, and so much more. And Heidi is in the middle of it all trying to make sure another young girl doesn’t end up as a corpse.
Galligan populates the county with a mixed corps of ne’er do wells with almost as many who support Heidi and there are who want Heidi long gone. Having lived in the area for a couple years, I think I can attest that the real-life Bad Axe County (Vernon County) isn’t like what Galligan presents. But that doesn’t make the story any less believable.
When necessary, the sheriff of Bad Axe County is one bad ass.
ECD
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