When a young woman living in backwoods Minnesota agrees to help her brother hide cash he stole from a drug dealer, she must fend off their corrupt cop uncle, lawless cousins, and vicious father. To protect herself she must employ the very evil she has grown up despising. A gritty portrayal of small-town America, Blood Up North is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.

Fredrick Soukup is a Minnesota-based literary fiction writer whose short works have been published in Fluent Magazine and Sou’wester. He was a semifinalist for the 2017 American Short Fiction Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction.

His debut novel, BLISS (Regal House Publishing, 2020), received a 2020 IPPY bronze medal in the category of Great Lakes Fiction, was a finalist for the 2020 Eric Hoffer Award, and was a finalist for the 2021 Minnesota Book Awards. His second novel, BLOOD UP NORTH (Vine Leaves Press, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2019 C&R Press Book Award.

He lives in Saint Paul with his brilliant wife, Ashley, and daughter, Clare.