William Kent Krueger grew up in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. He briefly attended Stanford University before leaving to experience the "real world," which included working as a logger, construction worker, freelance journalist, and a researcher in childhood development. For the last twenty years he has made his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife and two teenage children. His first three award-winning novels, Iron Lake, Boundary Waters, and Purgatory Ridge, are available from Atria Books, as is the recently published thriller The Devil's Bed.