The Murder of Andrew Sigler

Book excerpt: In 1924, in the small ore-mining town of Hurley, Wisconsin, wife and mother Emma Sigler killed her abusive husband, Andrew, with a .32 caliber revolver in the Gogebic Hotel. She phoned Andy Anderson and asked him to help her dispose of the body. Andy drove the back roads until he came to a field and threw Sigler's body across a ditch on the side of the road. Then he left town for a week. When he returned to Hurley, he was arrested for killing Sigler. After being jailed, he bragged to an undercover private detective that he killed Sigler. Andy was sentenced to life imprisonment at the state penitentiary. Emma was arrested as an accessory and was locked up in the county jail for six months until her trial. Shortly before her trial, Emma confessed to murdering her husband in self defense, but she was convicted and received a life sentence in the state penitentiary, and her four children were sent to an orphanage. When she arrived at the prison, it was discovered that Emma was pregnant. After more than 80 years, the circumstances surrounding the murder of Andrew Sigler and the convictions of Andy Anderson and Emma Sigler are being told in this novel based on a crime that had been considered "solved." Glen Carlson, a graduate of the University of Minnesota, has done graduate work at Harvard, and served in both the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Army. He and his wife live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula snowbelt with their dog, Buddy; their cat, Sophie; and their large and powerful snow-blower, Brutus. Andy Anderson was married to Glen's great-aunt, Lillian Randa.