Sins of Our Fathers (9781571319128)
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Authors: Shawn Lawrence Otto
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
© 2014, Text by Shawn Lawrence Otto
Cover art is in the public domain.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
(800) 520-6455
Published 2014 by Milkweed Editions
Cover design by Mary Austin Speaker
Cover photo/illustration is in the public domain.
Author photo by Jeff Johnson
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First Edition
Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Driscoll Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Otto, Shawn Lawrence.
Sins of our fathers / Shawn Lawrence Otto.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-57131-912-8
Summary: “After embezzling funds to support his gambling addiction, an unscrupulous white banker in Minnesota is blackmailed by his boss into sabotaging the creation of a competing, Native American-owned bank. As the banker befriends the people he's trying to frame, he struggles to escape from his past and do the right thing”-- Provided by publisher.
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Banks and banking--Fiction. 2.
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Extortion--Fiction. 3.
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Whites--Relations with Indians--Fiction. 4.
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Compulsive gamblers--Fiction. 5.
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Self-realization--Fiction.
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I. Title.
PS3615.T95S56 2014
813'.6âdc23 | 2014024589 |
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world's endangered forests and conserve natural resources.
Sins of Our Fathers
was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by the Friesens Corporation.
To the underdogs
Contents
The first thing JW noticed when he walked into the Hiawatha room was how different it was from what he had expected. Its low-rise tiers of seating resembled an upscale college lecture hall more than a hotel conference room. And it was surprisingly full. The air was rich with the colognes and perfumes of suited bankers. They moved up the floral-swirled tiers like a herd of mountain sheep. Clumps of them murmured in side eddies, and others sat to open laptops or check cell phones. A pretty brown-haired woman in the front row smiled encouragingly at him. He thought he might remember her from the Bemidji branch.
The setting was actually quite good, he decided, as he navigated between the long front table and the whiteboard. He was here to teach, after all, though his subject was a little different than the usual product introductions and regulatory claptrap people dozed through at these conferences: crashing on donut frosting and waiting for the next coffee break, then cordial and chummy at the lunch buffets before finally coming alive with free-flowing alcohol and the grind music of the last decade in the evenings. Unlike their more-buttoned-up CPA brethren, bankers tended to be party animalsânot like the crazy excesses of the investment community, of course; no cocaine-tinged threesomes, no strippersâbut edgy enough to be shocking to their customers nonetheless, were they to see them in the evenings at one of these conferences.
In many ways, JW's presentation appealed to this racier side of banking, because it dealt with danger, and not danger in the traditional sense, but existential danger, and its dramatic companionâopportunity. Instead of delivering the usual boring drone on the security features of the new hundred-dollar bill, he was here to talk about crimeâspecifically, redlining, and how to avoid being accused of it while still maximizing returns.
The room was packed and abuzz with an expectant air. Bankers stole glances at him and then went back to their huddled conversations, their leaned-in, best-new-friends-since-last-night joke-telling, their texts and e-mails about how boring it all was to their honeys back home.
He found a limp dongle of black cords emerging from a hole in the center of the table. He opened his briefcase and pulled out his laptop, unspooled and connected its cables. At forty, he was still in decent shape. He still had his hair, and it was still brown. He wore it swept back and a little to the side, though a few boyish sprigs always seemed to flop over the left edge of his forehead. He had a slight scar above his right eyebrow: a reminder of his teenage years training horses. It gave him a rugged air of adventure that contrasted nicely with his well-tailored banker's suit and his crisp white shirt. An air of mystery, his wife Carol called it, which was appropriate for talking about crime and its avoidance, something she found sexy. He was quite presentable, all things considered, and to the extent that being a leader creates charisma, he had a special magic about him when he was on the circuit doing presentations. He stuck a USB clicker into the slot on his laptop, touched the room control screen to light the hotel projector, and brought up his presentation:
BANKING IN INDIAN COUNTRY
Presented by John White
North Lake Bank, North Lake, Minnesota
Midwest Community Banking Conference
Dakota Grand Hotel, Minneapolis
He glanced at the clock. It was still a minute early, and more bankers were shuffling in. He had forty minutes. He pulled out his cell phone and checked his e-mail, but his inbox held nothing new apart from the usual junk mail for online gaming sites and reduced-rate mortgages. He set the phone down and cast his blue-gray eyesâFinnish eyes, his mother had called themâout over the audience, waiting patiently and silently as the stragglers found the few remaining seats. It was a full house.