Yes, there really is a Devil’s Cauldron.

It’s on the Brule River in Minnesota on the North Shore at Judge Magney State Park and it’s called the Devil’s Kettle.

I got the idea for Murder in the Devil’s Cauldron while hiking there. When it came time to write the novel, somehow the name Devil’s Kettle had morphed into the Devil’s Cauldron. I toyed with the idea of changing it to the real name, but really liked the Devil’s Cauldron.

Besides, I had created a fictional state park (the Enchantment River State Park), a fictional river, and a fictional town (Ruby Cove). They’re all based on real places, but have been highly fictionalized. So I decided to keep the name Devil’s Cauldron.

And, let’s face it, it’s a great name.

As a writer of fiction, I get to do stuff like that. So I did.

I didn’t change much about the Devil’s Kettle except making it a bit more accessible. Here’s a picture of the real thing and a closeup of the Devil’s Kettle that I used for the cover of my book: As you can see, the river really does split into two. You can see on the right side where the river becomes a waterfall. The left side falls about 10-20 feet into a pothole and disappears.

Although it’s been studied for years, no one has been able to find out what actually happens. They’ve put in colored dye, ping pong balls, and a variety of other things. If the water from the Devil’s Kettle actually rejoins the main river, those objects would have eventually showed up.

They haven’t.

Now supposedly someone pushed in a car, but since you can’t get a car to the site and I don’t remember the pothole being that big, that’s more likely an urban legend than anything.

While there are a ton of theories, so far there is nothing to substantiate them or even leave a clue. At least no one has reported a sighting of ping pong balls popping up in the middle of Lake Superior somewhere.

So in the meantime, the true secret of the Devil’s Kettle remains a mystery.

While I don’t solve the mystery of the Devil’s Kettle in Murder in the Devil’s Cauldron, you won’t be left with an unsolved mystery.