On Oct. 11, 1925, FBI Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan and two Chicago police officers set a trap for a trigger-happy car thief. Shanahan had received a tip that Martin Durkin was driving a stolen car from New Mexico to a garage at 6231 S. Princeton Ave. in Chicago.

But when Durkin showed up, the police weren’t in position. The Tribune reported at the time that one was in the back of the garage and the other was on the phone in the garage office, asking the station for reinforcements.

A garage employee had warned the officer that Durkin wouldn’t go quietly. The fugitive was already being sought for shooting several police officers in Chicago and California.

Edwin Shanahan was fatally shot on Oct. 11, 1925, while trying to arrest Martin Durkin at a Chicago garage. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

The FBI, on its website, says the two officers had stepped out to seek their replacements after hours on duty. Regardless, Shanahan was left to confront Durkin alone.

“When Durkin drove in, in a large blue Packard car, Shanahan drew his revolver and approached him. ‘Get out; I want you,’ he said,” according to the Tribune story.

“Durkin, still seated, drew his revolver and fired five times. One bullet struck Shanahan in the abdomen and another near the heart. He fired several times, but is believed to have missed the driver. Then, without delay, Durkin backed out of the garage and drove away.”

Shanahan was rushed to St. Bernard’s Hospital, where he died shortly afterward. He was the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty.

Pallbearers carry the body of Edwin Shanahan out of St. Leo’s Roman Catholic Church at 78th Street and Emerald Avenue on Oct. 14, 1925. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director, reportedly thought Shanahan’s killing posed an existential threat to the agency — that if the killer of a federal agent got away with it, other agents would never be safe. The agency launched a national manhunt.

Durkin’s mother, Hattie, told the Tribune she would send him away if he turned up at her front door asking: “Ma, can I stay here all night?”

She was tortured by the thought that officers, with shoot-to-kill orders, were tailing him. On Oct. 14, a Tribune headline announced: “2 Rifle Squads Hunt Durkin in Indiana Towns.”

“Six men were in each car and so were six rifles,” the accompanying story noted. “A plentiful supply of car bombs were taken by the detectives as they left.”

Radio stations were broadcasting appeals to northwest Indiana residents who might have seen Durkin, as he had lived there for many years.

At 21, the Tribune reported, Durkin “took up burglary as a side line.” But he had since refined his skills. Another thief might furtively steal a parked car. Durkin would boldly walk into a car dealer’s showroom, ask a salesperson about the virtues of various luxury models, pick one and say he would pay cash for it the following morning. He’d request that the car have a full gas tank and be appropriately lubricated.

Martin Durkin, left, appears in court with his lawyer, Eugene McGarry, in the summer of 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)
Lee Porter, who owned the garage where Edwin Shanahan was slain, shows bullet holes to Judge Harry B. Miller and jurors during Martin Durkin’s trial in June 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

That night, he’d break into the dealership and steal the car. Then Durkin would sell it in a distant city, reaping a handsome profit for zero financial investment. It was the reason the FBI was created: to connect the dots when a crime began in one locality and finished in another.

As the authorities continued to search for Durkin, his mother told reporters she attributed his problems to physical causes.

“He’s always been a wonderful son to me,” she said. “He was a fine little boy.” But during World War I, he enlisted at age 16, saying “he’d rather get shot than be a slacker.”

He served in the Army and saw action in France. “All the cannons roaring in his ears must have done something to him,” she said. “He has been so funny lately.”

On Oct. 28, police Sgt. Harry Gray and three officers went to Lloyd Ervin Austin’s apartment, having been advised that Durkin and his girlfriend, Austin’s niece, would come there. They asked if they could wait inside for Durkin.

Hattie Durkin kisses her son, Martin, around the time he was on trial in the shooting death of FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

When Durkin arrived with the girlfriend — Elizabeth “Betty” Andrews Werner — Gray tried to arrest him, and a gun battle ensued.

Sgt. Michael Naughton fired a shotgun at Durkin, but the blast killed Austin, who was hiding in a closet.

The girlfriend then fired a revolver, fatally wounding Gray. His wife would sit beside his hospital bed until he died five days later. His last words were, reportedly: “Oh, if Naughton had only known how to use a shotgun, or if he had let me take it.”

Durkin was wounded but again escaped. Between these two bloody episodes, frustrated law enforcement agencies launched umpteen raids and searched every which way.

Durkin became a celebrity, a desperado folk hero like Jesse James or Al Capone, Durkin’s contemporary. The Tribune dubbed him a “dapper sheik,” a reference to his movie star looks and suave manner.

Some of his female admirers became accomplices. Werner, whom the Tribune pronounced “just about the prettiest girl who ever protested innocence from behind the bars,” told reporters at the West Chicago Avenue police station: “Why, Marty wouldn’t kill a dog.”

The remark, the Oct. 13 story noted, echoed “all those statements which lovely ladies, for many a year, have been making in defense of their man when he gets in a jam.”

The Tribune described Martin Durkin’s wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, shown in 1926, as someone who Durkin “wooed hurriedly, wed hastily and promised, at the time of his arrest, to love long.” He also had a “sweetheart” named Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Andrews Werner. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

In November, the Tribune reported that “a man resembling Durkin” visited a barbershop at 1443 Fullerton Ave. Ora F. Croucher, the barber, said the man carried a newspaper, held it over his face during the haircut and occasionally glanced at the front door. When the barber brushed against the customer’s right side, he felt a pistol.

By December, there were rumors that Durkin was negotiating his return from a distant location. He planned to plead self-defense, claiming the FBI agent had fired first.

The following month, the FBI got a critical break. On Jan. 17, 1926, a sheriff in Pecos, Texas, had noticed a green Cadillac and asked the driver to see the ownership papers. The sheriff observed the man had a pistol and there was a .44-caliber Winchester rifle in the back seat.

The driver said he was a sheriff and the papers were in his hotel room. His looks and dignified manner were convincing, so the Texas sheriff allowed him to leave to fetch them.

When he didn’t return, the sheriff went to the hotel and was told that a “Mr. Conley” and a female companion had hastily departed. When he reported the incident, the FBI agent in El Paso recognized the man’s resemblance to Durkin’s image on a wanted poster.

After a three-month manhunt, Martin Durkin, center, was in the custody of detectives in early 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)

The car, with a broken wheel, was found abandoned near Girvin, Texas. A ticket agent said a strange man and woman had boarded a Southern Pacific train for San Antonio. The conductor of that train was interviewed at his home in El Paso and verified that the man seemed to be Durkin and had inquired about a connecting train to St. Louis.

The St. Louis police stopped the train in an open field near that city. Durkin was dragged from the train and clapped in irons.

As Durkin awaited trial, his girlfriend, Betty Werner, and his wife, Irma Sullivan Durkin, announced they’d joined forces to save him from the death penalty.

“I’m awfully glad Betty’s going to stick to Mart,” the wife said of the girlfriend’s fidelity. “But why shouldn’t she stick? I don’t see how any woman could try to send a man to the gallows, no matter what she thought of him.”

“Gee, this love business is something funny,” Durkin said.

By the time of the trial, Werner had a change of heart and told a prosecutor she would tell “the whole truth,” the Tribune reported in April 1926.

“And if I tell the truth I surely can’t testify for Marty,” she said.

She added: “I’m going to work hard after it’s all over.” Some people, the Tribune noted, thought she meant working in the movies.

Martin Durkin leaves for state prison in 1926, having been convicted of killing FBI agent Edwin Shanahan. At the time, such an act was not a federal crime. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

Because it wasn’t a federal offense to kill an FBI agent, Durkin was tried in a state court. A jury didn’t buy Durkin’s self-defense argument, and he was sentenced to serve 35 years in the Joliet penitentiary.

He was subsequently transferred to the federal prison in Leavenworth to serve time for transporting stolen vehicles across state lines.

Durkin was released on July 28, 1954, when he was 53. He died in 1981.

Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of “Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.”

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at grossmanron34@gmail.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com

By Rae Ellen Bichell, KFF Health News

Stacey Knoll thought the court summons she received was a scam. She didn’t remember getting any medical bills from Montrose Regional Health, a nonprofit hospital, after a 2020 emergency room visit.

So she was shocked when, three years after the trip to the hospital, her employer received court orders requiring it to start funneling a chunk of her paychecks to a debt collector for an unpaid $881 medical bill — which had grown to $1,155.26 from interest and court fees.

The timing was terrible. After leaving a bad marriage and staying in a shelter, she had just gotten full custody of her three children, steady housing in Montrose, Colorado, and a job at a gas station.

“And that’s when I got that garnishment from the court,” she said. “It was really scary. I’d never been on my own or raised kids on my own.”

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KFF Health News reviewed 1,200 Colorado cases in which judges, over a two-year period from Feb. 1, 2022, through Feb. 1, 2024, gave permission to garnish wages over unpaid bills. At least 30% of the cases stemmed from medical care — even when patients’ bills should have been covered by Medicaid, the public insurance program for those with low incomes or disabilities. That 30% is likely an underestimate since medical debt is often hidden behind other types of debt, such as from credit cards or payday loans. But even that minimum would translate to roughly 14,000 cases a year in Colorado in which courts approved taking people’s wages because of unpaid medical bills.

Among the other findings:

Patients were pursued for medical bills ranging from under $30 to over $30,000, with most of the bills amounting to less than $2,400. As the cases rolled through the legal system, accumulating interest and court fees, the amount that patients owed often grew by 25%. In one case, it snowballed by more than 400%.
Cases trailed people for up to 14 years after they received medical care, with debt collectors reviving their cases even as they moved from job to job.
Medical providers of all stripes are behind these bills — big health care chains, small rural hospitals, physician groups, public ambulance services, and more. In several cases, hospitals won permission to take the pay of their own employees who had unpaid bills from treatment at the facilities.

Colorado has company. It is one of 45 states that allow wage garnishment for unpaid medical bills. Only Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas have banned wage garnishment for medical debt.

As KFF Health News has reported, medical debt is devastating for millions of people across the country. And now the problem is likely to grow more pressing nationwide. Millions of Americans are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years due to Medicaid changes in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law and if Congress allows some Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire. That means health crises for the newly uninsured could lead them, too, into a spiral of medical debt.

And the hurt will linger: Large unpaid medical bills are staying on credit reports in most states after a July decision from a federal judge reversed a new rule aimed at protecting consumers.

“If you can’t maintain your health, how are you going to work to pay back a debt?” said Adam Fox, deputy director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a nonprofit aimed at lowering health costs. “And if you fundamentally can’t pay the bill, wage garnishment isn’t going to help you do that. It’s going to put you in more financial distress.”

Flying blind on medical debt

When someone fails to pay a bill, the creditor that provided the service — whether for a garage door repair, a car loan, or medical care — can take the debtor to court. Creditors can also pass the debt to a debt collector or debt buyer, who can do the same.

“At any given point, about 1% of working adults are being garnished for some reason,” said Anthony DeFusco, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who studied paycheck data from ADP, a payroll processor that distributes paychecks to about a fifth of private sector U.S. workers. “That’s a big chunk of the population.”

But specific research into the practice of garnishing wages over medical debt is scant. Studies in North Carolina, Virginia, and New York have found that nonprofit hospitals commonly garnish wages from indebted patients, with some studies finding those patients tend to work in low-wage occupations.

Marty Makary, who led research on medical debt wage garnishment in Virginia at Johns Hopkins University before joining Trump’s cabinet as Food and Drug Administration commissioner, has called the practice “aggressive.” He co-authored a study that found 36% of Virginia hospitals, mostly nonprofit and mostly in urban areas, were using garnishment to collect unpaid debts in 2017, affecting thousands of patients.

The Colorado findings from KFF Health News show that hospitals are far from the only medical providers going after patients’ paychecks, though.

Researchers and advocates say that, in addition to a dearth of court case data, another phenomenon tends to obscure how often this happens. “People find debt shameful,” said Lester Bird, a senior manager at the Pew Charitable Trusts who specializes in courts. “A lot of this exists in the shadows.”

Without data on how often this tactic is employed, lawmakers are flying blind — even as a 2024 Associated Press-NORC poll showed about 4 in 5 U.S. adults believe it’s important for the federal government to provide medical debt relief.

‘Blood from a turnip’

Colorado was among the first of 15 states to scratch medical debt from credit reports. Debt buyers in the state aren’t allowed to foreclose on a patient’s home. If qualified patients opt to pay in monthly installments, those payments shouldn’t exceed 6% of their household income — and the remaining debt gets wiped after about three years of paying.

But if they don’t agree to a payment plan, Coloradans can have up to 20% of their disposable earnings garnished. The National Consumer Law Center gave the state a “D” grade for state protections of family finances.

Consumer advocates said they aren’t sure how well even those Colorado requirements are being followed. And people wrote letters to the courts saying wage garnishment would exacerbate their already dire financial situations.

“I have begun to fall behind on my electricity, my gas, my water my credit cards,” wrote a man in western Colorado in a letter to a judge that KFF Health News obtained in the court filings. Court records show he was working in construction and at a rent-to-own store, with about $8,000 in medical debt. He wrote to the judge that he was paying close to $1,000 a month. “The way things are going now I will lose everything.”

The people being sued in KFF Health News’ Colorado review worked in a wide array of jobs. They worked in school districts, ranching, mining, construction, local government, even health care. Several worked at stores such as Walmart and Family Dollar, or at gas stations, restaurants, or grocery stores.

“You’re really kicking people when they’re down,” said Lois Lupica, a former attorney working with the Denver-based Community Economic Defense Project and the Debt Collection Lab at Princeton. “They’re basically suing the you-can’t-get-blood-from-a-turnip population.”

In 2022, court records show, Valley View health system based in Glenwood Springs was allowed to garnish the wages of one of its patients over a $400 medical bill. The patient was working at a local organization that the health system supported as part of the community benefits it provides to keep its tax-exempt status. Nonprofit hospitals like Valley View are required to provide community benefits, which can also include charity care that covers patients’ bills.

Stacey Gavrell, the health system’s chief community relations officer, said it offers options such as interest-free payment plans and care at reduced or no cost to families with incomes up to 500% of the federal poverty level.

“As our rural region’s largest healthcare provider, it is imperative to the health and well-being of our community that Valley View remains a financially viable organization,” she said. “Most of our patients work with us to develop a payment plan or pursue financial assistance.”

The collection agency that took the employee to court, A-1 Collection Agency, advertises itself on its website as empathetic: “We understand times are tough and money is tight.”

Pilar Mank, who oversees operations at A-1’s parent company, Healthcare Management, said it accepts payment plans as small as $50 a month and that most of the hospitals it works with allow it to offer a discount if patients pay all at once.

“Suing a patient is the absolute last resort,” she said. “We try everything we can to work with the patient.”

If you can’t maintain your health, how are you going to work to pay back a debt?

Hospitals sometimes also garnish wages from their own employees for care they provided them. In one case, a hospital employee worked her way up from housekeeper to registrar to quality analyst. She even participated in public events representing her employer and appeared on the hospital’s website as a featured employee — while the court issued writs of garnishment until her $10,000 in medical bills from the hospital was paid off.

“Hospital care costs money to deliver,” said Colorado Hospital Association spokesperson Julie Lonborg about hospitals’ garnishing their own employees’ wages. “In some ways, I think it’s funny to be asked the question. I would understand if someone said, ‘Why aren’t you garnishing their wages?’”

Studies show that hospital debt collection efforts through wage garnishment bring in only about 0.2% of hospital revenues, said April Kuehnhoff, a senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, which advocates for people with low incomes.

“We also know that there are states that don’t allow this at all,” she said. “Hospitals are continuing to provide medical care to consumers.”

Smooth sailing for collectors —but not for patients

Health care providers appeared as the plaintiffs in only 2% of the medical debt cases. Instead, cases were filed almost entirely by third-party debt collectors and buyers, with BC Services and Professional Finance Company behind more than half of the cases, followed by A-1 Collection Agency and Wakefield & Associates.

Debt buyers make money by buying debt from providers who’ve given up on getting paid then collecting what they can of the money owed, plus interest. Debt collectors get paid a percentage of what they recover. Some companies do a bit of both.

BC Services declined to comment, and Wakefield & Associates did not respond to questions.

Charlie Shoop, president of Professional Finance Company, said his company initiates wage garnishment on less than 1% of all accounts placed with it for collection.

Health care providers in Colorado can no longer hide behind debt collectors’ names when they sue people, according to a 2024 state law prompted by a 9News-Colorado Sun investigation in partnership with a Colorado News Collaborative-KFF Health News reporting project.

In many states, the path for filing a case against a debtor and garnishing their wages is relatively smooth — especially if the debtor doesn’t appear in court.

“It’s unbelievably easy,” said Dan Vedra, a lawyer in Colorado who often represents consumers in debt cases. “If you have a word processor and a spreadsheet, you can mass-produce thousands of lawsuits in a matter of hours or minutes.”

Within KFF Health News’ sample, nearly all the medical debt cases were default judgments, meaning the patient did not defend themselves in court or in writing. Missing a court date can happen for a variety of reasons, such as not receiving the notice in the mail, assuming it was a scam, knowingly ignoring it, or not having the time to take off from work.

Vedra and other debt law experts said a high rate of default judgments indicates a system that favors the pursuers over the pursued — and increases the chances someone will be harmed by an erroneous bill.

But in New Hampshire, creditors now have to keep going to court for each paycheck they want to garnish, because the state allows creditors to garnish only wages that have already been earned, said Maanasa Kona, an associate research professor at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

“It might not look like much on paper,” she said. “It’s just not worth it if they have to keep going back to court.”

If you have a word processor and a spreadsheet, you can mass-produce thousands of lawsuits in a matter of hours or minutes.

Wrongly pursued for bills

The nation’s medical billing setup is already prone to errors due to its complexity, according to Barak Richman, a law professor at George Washington University and a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine who has studied medical debt collection practices in several states. “Bills are not only noncomprehensible, but often wrong,” Richman said.

Indeed, Colorado’s Health Care Policy & Financing Department, which runs Medicaid in the state, said it sent out nearly 11,000 letters in the past fiscal year to health providers and collectors that erroneously went after patients on Medicaid. Bills for Medicaid recipients are supposed to be sent to Medicaid, not the patients, who typically pay a nominal amount, if anything, for their care.

Shoop said his industry has pushed Colorado, without success, for access to a database that would allow them to confirm if patients had Medicaid coverage.

Colorado’s Medicaid program declined to comment.

Patricia DeHerrera in Rifle, Colorado, had to prove that she and her children had Medicaid when they received care at Grand River Health — but only after A-1 contacted her employer at the time, the gas station chain Kum & Go, with court-approved paperwork to take a portion of her paychecks.

She contacted the state, which sent letters to the hospital and the collector notifying them they were engaging in “illegal billing action” and telling the collector to stop. The companies did.

Theresa Wagenman, controller for Grand River Health, said if a patient can present a letter from a Medicaid caseworker saying they’re eligible, then their bills get removed from the collections pipeline. Wagenman also said patients get at least eight letters in the mail and several phone calls before Grand River gives the go-ahead for the collector to send them to court.

DeHerrera’s main advice to others in this situation: “Know your rights. Otherwise, they’re going to take advantage of you.”

Yet fighting back isn’t easy.

Nicole Silva, who lives in the 900-person town of Sanford in south-central Colorado, said she and her family were all on Medicaid when her daughter was in a car crash. Still, court records show, her wages were garnished for a $2,181.60 ambulance ride, which grew to more than $3,000 from court fees and interest.

Nicole Silva, a preschool teacher who lives in Sanford, Colorado, had her wages garnished for an ambulance bill from when her daughter, Karla, needed urgent medical care. According to a KFF Health News analysis, Colorado courts allow debt collectors to garnish people’ s wages for unpaid medical bills in roughly 14,000 cases a year. Left to right: Nicole Silva,… (Matthew Eric Lit/KFF Health News/TNS)

She tried to prove the bill was wrong, contacting her county’s social services office, but Silva said it wasn’t helpful and she wasn’t able to reach the right person at a state office. The state Medicaid program confirmed to KFF Health News that her daughter was covered at the time of the wreck.

Fighting the bill felt like too much for Silva and her husband to handle while parenting a growing number of kids, one of them severely disabled, and working — she as a preschool teacher and he as a rancher.

Not receiving the roughly $500 a month that she said came out of her pay was enough to affect their ability to pay other bills. “It was deciding to buy groceries or pay the electric bill,” Silva said.

When their electricity got shut off, she said, they had to scramble to borrow money from colleagues and friends to get it turned back on — with an extra fee.

She said the saga makes her hesitant to call an ambulance in the future.

Fox, of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, said consumers often think they cannot do anything to stop their wages from being garnished, but they can contest it in court, for example by pointing out they should have qualified for discounted — or charity — care if the hospital that provided the treatment is a nonprofit.

DeFusco, the economist, believes filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy is an underused option for debtors. It halts garnishment in its tracks, though not always permanently, and it comes with other consequences. But he understands it’s a Catch-22: It’s a complex process and typically necessitates hiring a lawyer.

“To get rid of your debt, you need money,” he said. “And the whole reason you’re in this situation is because you don’t have money.”

Methodology

We wanted to know how often Coloradans get their wages garnished due to medical debt. Courts don’t compile this information, and researchers and advocates haven’t tracked it systematically.

So we created our own database. We requested a list of all civil cases across the state in which judges gave permission for a person’s earnings to be garnished — known as writs of garnishment in court lingo — from Feb. 1, 2022, through Feb. 1, 2024. The Colorado Supreme Court Library provided a list from all courts except for Denver County Court, which provided its own records. The combined list comprised nearly 90,000 unique court cases. We split up the cases by county population — small (fewer than 10,000 people), medium (10,000 to 100,000 people), and large (more than 100,000 people) — then generated a random sample of 400 cases from each group to ensure we evaluated medical debt across counties of all sizes.

To identify medical debt cases, we looked at the original creditors named in court records, primarily the complaints or affidavits of indebtedness. Often, this information was available through a state website. When it wasn’t available online, we asked county courthouses to send us supporting documents. We counted dentists as medical providers. We excluded 14 cases in which the debt wasn’t exclusively medical.

We looked only at cases in which courts approved money to be garnished from someone’s paycheck, as opposed to from other sources such as their bank accounts. We did not review garnishment cases involving child support, taxes, or federal student loans.

KFF Health News intern Henry Larweh, data editor Holly K. Hacker, Mountain States editor Matt Volz, and web editor Lydia Zuraw contributed to this report.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

BLUE DELLIQUANTI: Presents “Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food (with Recipes).” 7 p.m.  Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

KAREN ENGSTROM: Discusses “Shadowland,” book two in a series set in 1950s northern Minnesota. In conversation with Sarah Stonich. 7 p.m. Monday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

JOSHUA MOEHLING: Award-winning Minnesota writer discusses his mystery novels, including “A Long Time Gone” and “Where the Dead Sleep,” in MELSA’s Club Book series. Free. 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Burnhaven Library, 1101 County 42 W., Burnsville.

Nick Offerman at the Oscars on Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Jordan Strauss / Invision / AP)

NICK OFFERMAN: Presents “Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery,” with Lee Buchanan, former manager of the Offerman Woodshop in Los Angeles. 7 p.m. Monday, St. Catherine University, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, presented by Magers & Quinn. Ticketed event. $169. Go to magersandquinn.com.

STONICH/KRUEGER: Acclaimed Minnesota authors Sarah Stonich and William Kent Krueger are guest speakers at the first anniversary of Story Line Books bookstore and Stories at the Station reading series. Free. 6 p.m. Thursday, Union Depot, 214 E. Fourth St., St. Paul.

AMY WELDON: Introduces “Creature: A Novel of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein,” in conversation with poet Michael Kleber-Diggs. 7 p.m. Thursday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

(Courtesy of Austin Macauley Publishers)

JACK ZIPES: Professor emeritus in the University of Minnesota department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch discusses his books “Remember the Jewish and German Questions” and his magical Wellikans trilogy that begins with “The Wrath of Peace or How the Wellikans Saved the World,” followed by “Lost and Found or How the Wellikans Helped the Twins Avoid a Catastrophe” and “Home Is Not So Sweet or How the Wellikans and the Twins Found Truth.”

In the first book, young witches Anja and Zack, who can turn themselves into birds, search for their parents after ruthless dictator Nexus takes control of society. Guided by an elderly witch, they find allies among the Wellikans, small people who live in underground villages connected by tunnels. As the series continues, the twins find their parents, grow up, fall in love and fight dictatorship. There are thought-provoking issues here, including manipulation of news to those who “can’t think for themselves,” the power of dictators and how the twins and their friends fight repression with resistance and defiance. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. Free. Registration required at magersandquinn.com.

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Two novels today that belong at the top of your TBR pile. One is a debut from a Minnesotan, the other from a Wisconsinite. Their characters live through dark times, but both end with hope.

“Life, & Death, & Giants”: by Ron Rindo (St. Martin’s Press, $26)

(Courtesy of St. Martin’s Press)

I took the envelope my father had left me upstairs to my bedroom. I drew back the curtains to allow the sun to shine in. I sat on the bed and tore open the envelope. Though I have read it over many times since, the letter seems to smolder in my hands each time, so close it is, so close it must be, to the perpetual flames of hell. — from “Life, & Death, & Giants”

This stunning novel by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is about so many things — community, family, loss of faith, strained marriage and a famous giant named Gabriel Fisher.

Rindo’s inspiration for Gabriel was Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest person who ever lived. He died in 1940 in Michigan at age 22.

Gabriel lives in the small town of Lakota, Wis., where he is a wonder. He walks at 8 months and is over 6 feet tall as a child. He communicates with animals, tenderly cradling the goats when their throats are cut for butchering, and he is so strong at 7 years old that he hits a softball into windows of cars in the distant parking lot.

The story is told through the eyes of four characters: Hannah Fisher, Gabriel’s Amish grandmother; Billy Walton, owner of the local bar and friend of Hannah’s husband, Josiah; Thomas Kennedy, kind veterinarian who takes young Gabriel on his rounds; and Tony Beathard, one of Gabriel’s coaches.

After Gabriel’s mother, Rachel, died giving birth, he lived on a hardscrabble farm with his older brother. Rachel went to her grave without speaking of the boys’ father. When Gabriel’s brother dies, the boy moves in with his Amish grandparents. As he grows taller and stronger in his athletic ability, he is the town’s pride. When he accepts a college football scholarship, his grandparents fear the English world (their word for non-Amish) will spoil him. But they let him go. (Glimpses into the lives of Amish people are one of the most interesting parts of the story, especially the community’s embrace of Gabriel when he needs them most.)

The first parts of the book are about Gabriel’s childhood and athletics and his maturing to almost 9 feet tall, but after he’s grown up, his character is more fully revealed. When he leaves to travel the world, Hannah begins to doubt her faith and moves in with Kennedy in a chaste relationship.

Hannah’s emotions are heartbreaking as she struggles with losses in her life. At Kennedy’s house, she is introduced to books by women, including Emily Dickinson, whose poem “Life, and Death, and Giants… ” inspired the novel’s title. Hannah, who has read only the Bible, is amazed and comforted that these women shared her emotions and seemed to know exactly the way she feels.

Meanwhile, Gabriel is traveling the world until an accident sends him home. A shocking family secret is exposed, and death comes to Lakota.

The richness of this story and the beauty of Rindo’s prose are getting praise from readers and critics. As they should.

“The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore”: by Anika Fajardo (Gallery Books, $29)

I had thought I had seen every paper in this folder, but this scrap was unfamiliar. I ran my thumb along the torn edge. This piece of paper was proof — of what I wasn’t sure. Staring at this makeshift map in the quiet of my mothers’ empty house, I felt a great whoosh of recognition: The map, I was certain, was the key to fulfilling my promise. — from “The Many Mothers of Dolores Moore”

Family is also at the heart of this involving debut novel by an author who was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota and lives in Minneapolis.

(Courtesy of Gallery Books)

Dolores Moore is a 30-something cartographer who’s just lost her job. She’s still grieving for the two lesbians who adopted her, one of whom was her maternal aunt. Dolores knew she had been born in Colombia, and when her aunt/mother was dying she made Dolores promise to visit the place where she was born. When Dolores finds a crudely drawn map of places in the city of Cali, she knows she has to keep her promise.

A little unsure of herself, Dolores finds the apartment building where her mother and Colombian-born father lived in happiness. Then the narrative moves between Dolores’ explorations of the city, where she feels oddly at home, and her parents’ love story in 1989.

In a touch of magical realism, Dolores hears a chorus of voices made up of her deceased female relatives, including her two mothers, aunts, great-aunts and grandmothers, commenting on her decisions. Sometimes they suggest what she should do; sometimes they comment on what she is doing. Sometimes they quibble among themselves.

Back in the United States, Dolores reconnects with Franklin, a former lover. He and his Vietnamese grandfather care for her cats while she is in Colombia. Now she has to figure out what to do with her life. Then nature steps in, forcing her to make her biggest decision.

This is lovely writing in which the author weaves information about the history of maps and how they are made, and Dolores imagines her parents in love in their little apartment where her mother/aunt took care of her as a baby.

Fajardo is the author of a memoir, “Magical Realism for Non-Believers,” and two books for young readers. She will be at the Twin Cities Book Festival on Saturday, Nov. 8, at the Union Depot in St. Paul.

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