Welcome to Book Readers Heaven! Find Books, Reviews, Short Stories, Authors, Publicity, a little poetry, music to complement...and other stuff including politics, about life... "Books, Cats: Life is Sweet..."
Anna could see her own exhaustion and elation mirrored in the faces of the others; a dance, a symphony, a poem of human effort and mind. The first hint that something had gone wrong was the call “Rock!” carried down the black canyon on a gust of fear.
Did you know that each touch from a human hand on the cave's interior will be a problem? Pieces may be totally destroyed by humans who are visiting with no thought but of their pleasure in seeing these beautiful examples of God's creations...In Barr's book we all learn that each move to be made must be in consideration of the place in which they are rather than just...living...as best as you can... In this case, the book was very informative re spelunking... Remember, they were moving into areas which had never been explored before, but the videos do illustrate the equipment needed to be worn to provide light in the Dark as you will be reading...
The search was intensive to get there, where Frieda was, but now, Anna, with the mind of a police office, albeit in the Rangers, had to be immediately aware that one or more of the people in Frieda's group had caused the fall of her friend... She began to gather info just by introducing herself to the few there... There was a doctor and his wife--a woman who was clearly a problem. She didn't want to be there, was disgusted that her husband had to be doctoring--well, he wasn't a true general practitioner, but at least he knew enough to provide medication, medical supplies. But it was clear his wife could care less about anything but getting out of there... It should be mentioned at this point that she actually disappeared and could not be found once outside... Anna could not let that go, as the book goes on... The wife had been asked to backup Anna "as a caretaker" and clearly that wasn't going to happen... This begins the mystery part of the book...
Anna found herself depending on one of her initial guides, who was now the onsite director of planning for the rescue... Somehow, she felt safer with him around... He was efficient and soon had everybody working to move out... They were waiting for the medical team who had the necessary equipment to carry Frieda out... People were beginning to look happy, excited, ready to leave this Dark that had kept them longer than originally planned...
And, Anna was right there by Frieda's side when the crew had arrived, prepared her for traveling in a secured manner and went through details with the Site Director... They were ready to go!
They were moving quickly and efficiently, when out of the surrounding darkness: Rock!
When Anna heard the call of a rock coming, she didn't know how fast it would become a slide that would overtake the entire group carrying Freida... After the slide settled, Anna tried to reconnect with Freida... She had fallen deeper into a hole...Anna could not reach her, but could touch her, checking her neck to find a pulse... feeling something wet, she thought it was blood and Freida was bleeding. She pulled her hand out and discovered it was her tears...
The rescue had become a recovery...
But Anna would not leave the site... She began searching, to learn where the Rock had come from. She began her search there, looking for anything that would help to document just how a slide had begun... finally, she found it--a place where somebody had sat on a rock, as if resting...or waiting...
Anna was now conducting a murder investigation...
It didn't take me long to determine the "whodunit." It seems I can recognize the character personalities that are created to reveal those who are power hungry... But there was another that I would not have picked. This, too, reflects what we are experiencing more and more... Who could Anna trust?
The ending surprised me, because there was so little to lead up to the actual crimes taking place. Readers will need to step back from the rescue efforts and its failure and move into investigation mode along with Anna, who became relentless. Even to the extent of talking one of the men in the original group into returning to the cave to find as much of actually what happened as possible. In the book, and I hope, not in reality, there is a major loss of a section of the cave that could not be reclaimed... And they found a lost member of the team...
One of the most fantastic, informative books about spelunking that perhaps has been written wrapped up in fiction. It is the only one I've read and who better than Nevada Barr to take on creating a thrilling story of a place where no man had ever been before... And, just how destructive people can become when riches beckon to those who place money over humanity... A Must-Read for many reasons, most of all to allow readers to experience some place where they really have a right to be afraid and be thankful there are others who will attempt to ensure you live through that experience! More people need to rely on their neighbors and find love and help from nearly all of them...
Anna could see that a thin drizzle had started. Cold, gray, winter rain, falling on concrete. Soft, lifeless rain. Ray Bradbury rain.
I'm past the time when horror in books or movies phase me... But, this book? I was holding my breath in many scenes... I was amazed that this story was based upon a real location... I was impressed with how she chose to write this book--essentially in two parts--the horror of this cave as an individual lost there in uncharted territory... and the mystery of death there... Her writing told exactly what was there, true, but the way she told it, readers will actually feel Anna's fear as she faces a totally new experience that she has never faced before... And if you've read other books by this Federal Ranger, you will know that she has faced many dangers during her professional career... Without fear...
But this location was some place she didn't want to be. First she was claustrophobic. And she had a fear of being underground... But you would never know about these fears except through revelation by the writer as she shares how she experiences them, without letting other people know... I have to say that this female character is one of the most badass heroines I've ever met through a books...
First, I've had the wonderful opportunity to visit nearby Laurel Caverns in Pennsylvania... It was an exciting day for me, I had already, for the first time ever, gone down the rapids of a nearby river which was so exciting! But then headed over to the caverns. I'd never seen anything so beautiful, realizing they were naturally made... The key difference, though, that you should know is that the part where the spelunkers are visiting the undeveloped part of the cave that is shown in these videos. They have lights, guide ropes, a guide with you as you go through, and, in general, are completely safe... and free of all potential problems.
Very few people had ever even seen the part of the cave where Anna will be going... She had been especially requested by a coworker to come. She had been hurt in a fall and would have to be taken out for medical help, even though a doctor was part of the small group touring at that time. She was happy to come when they had put out the call for emergency help and was first assigned to a desk to control traffic, etc. It was only after she had agreed to help that the site director told her why she was there--at request of the injured woman they needed to rescue...
Anna mocked herself for feeling like a woman in a tumbrel, jouncing through her last glorious moments toward the guillotine and the vast unknown. Still, she rather wished the day had closed without this final hurrah of heavenly fireworks. A sunless world would have been that much easier to leave behind. After too short a ride, the pickup pulled off the rutted dirt road into a wilderness parking lot incongruously marked off with concrete curbs. Anna’d been too engrossed in morbid imaginings to recollect the twists and turns they’d made through the wrinkled landscape, but she guessed they were only three or four miles from the headquarters buildings. The discovery of Lechuguilla in the backyard had put Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the odd position of having doubled in size overnight. Oscar had likened the experience to “finding Yellowstone in your basement.” Holden Tillman opened the tailgate, and the three of them divided up the gear. As they started the hike to the mouth of Lechuguilla, Oscar filled Anna in on the team briefing. Holden Tillman was officially titled Underground Rescue Coordinator. He was in charge of all activities subterranean. The NPS had borrowed him from the local Bureau of Land Management office because of his expertise in caves and cave rescues. Oscar assured Anna he was, in caving circles, known as the Holden Tillman. A quiet person with an aw-shucks drawl, Tillman seemed half embarrassed and half amused by Oscar’s effusions. “Oscar’s going to write my eulogy,” he told Anna, a slow smile blooming beneath a brown brush of mustache. “He just wants to get some practicing in before I’m dead.” Anna liked Holden right off. She hoped nothing happened to change that. Experience taught her her first impression of people was dead wrong as often as not. This time she had a gut feeling it wasn’t. Tillman was of an age with Iverson—in his forties—but there the resemblance ended. He was a small man, maybe five-foot-eight and a hundred thirty pounds with skin that looked shrunk to fit a wiry, muscled frame. Crow’s-feet radiated from the corners of his eyes to curve down in unbroken lines along the sides of his face. His forehead, wide and slightly sloping, was cut by horizontal lines as sharp as old scars. The effect of this network of time was a wizened soul, blessed with wisdom and, possibly, “the sight.” At least that was the fanciful image that floated up from an old fairy-tale illustration buried in Anna’s memory. Despite narrow shoulders and small frame, Holden carried a prodigious amount of equipment. Though half a foot shorter than Oscar, arms and shoulders were corded with muscle where Iverson’s were mapped in bone. Anna guessed his pack was seventy or eighty pounds but it didn’t bow his back or take the spring from his step. As he walked ahead of her along the trail Anna heard sotto-voce snatches of song. She laughed. Holden sang the digging song Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs sang on their way down into the mine. Anna saw the cavern sparkling with a million lights and peopled with benevolent spirits. Despite herself she felt better than she had since Iverson had brought her the news of Frieda’s head injury. Holden and Oscar, along with CACA’s superintendent and the chief of resource management for the caverns, had organized a four-person team that would follow the two men Anna was with. The second team would carry a stretcher for the evacuation, medical supplies Dr. McCarty had requested, and a Korean War-vintage field phone with spools of wire so Holden would have telephone communications with the surface during the carry-out. The logistics were staggering, and Anna was duly impressed that the details had been hammered out in such a short time. There were people for every aspect of the rescue: cavers who would do nothing but rig the drops for hauling Frieda up the long vertical and near-vertical ascents; cavers to schlep water, packs, garbage, batteries, and food. Anna listened to the plans being rehashed by Holden and Oscar as they walked single file along a ridge above a dry creek bed, and she began to wonder what would undo her first: her fear of enclosed spaces or her fear of crowds. The sheer absurdity freed her mind, and for a time she was able to shut out the human murmurings and enjoy the hike. They were on a plateau to the north of the gypsum plains that spread down into Texas. What vegetation managed to eke out a livelihood from the parched soil kept a low profile. Little had grown to greater than knee height, and there were barren spaces between plants. With the lifting of the clouds and the dazzling clarity of the rain-washed air, Anna could see to the edge of the world, or so it seemed, and the world was all high, clean desert, burnished with gold. Even knowing she walked over limestone honey-combed with passages, she couldn’t imagine a less likely place to find the entrance to a world-class cave. She pictured the plateau cut into thin sections and placed between sheets of glass like the ant farms she’d seen as a child. Beneath her feet, creeping through those twisting tunnels, were human beings. “There it is.” Oscar interrupted her musings. They’d walked down a slope and crossed the stone bottom of a wash to climb again. Ahead of them was more of the same: low hills dotted with desert shrubs and cactus. “See that green spot?” Iverson pointed to a cluster of stunted trees poking from a fold in the hills. “That’s it.” Anna took his word for it. Within a few minutes they’d reached the trees, and still she was none the wiser. Not until they climbed down four or five feet to where the oak trees had found soil to root could she see the entrance. Back in the rocks an opening maybe twenty feet wide, thirty long, and ringed by heavy overhanging brows of rock, showed darkly. Over the years Anna had made any number of rappels from ten to two hundred ten feet. After the first step, she’d thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Suspended like a cliff swallow over lakes in the Absaroka Beartooth, dangling above a sea of dusty live oaks in northern California. There was an above and a below. Here, she noted with an unpleasant tingle, there was neither. In the theatrical light of coming evening, the entrance to Lechuguilla looked like a portal, one lacking the standard three dimensions agreed upon by the real world. She’d read of holes described as yawning, gaping, hungry—words that suggested an orifice, an appetite. The sixty-foot drop leading into Lech didn’t fit any of those adjectives. Rather than sentience, it suggested a departure from life. The last rays of the sun skimmed its surface, lighting the stone for fifteen feet or so. Below that, nothing. Night took all. “Hi ho,” Holden said happily. Iverson began checking ropes secured to bolts near a tree that showed scarring from when it had been used as an anchor in previous descents. “The climbs are all rigged. We leave them that way along the main trade routes—established routes through the cave. We’ve found it does a lot less damage to the resource to leave the rigging in place than having every expedition rerig each time.” “Me first, you last?” he said to Holden as he threaded the rope through his rappel rack. Holden nodded. Oscar leaned back and walked, spider-like, from sight. The sun slid below the horizon, and Anna felt suddenly cold. “It’s getting dark,” she said, and hoped Tillman hadn’t heard the faint whine beneath her words. “So?” “Off-rope,” drifted up from the black hole. “Good point,” Anna said, threaded the rope through her rack, pulled on her leather gloves, and unhooked the safety. “On-rope,” she shouted down, and stepped back into the darkness.
~~~~
Prepare to shudder... For in the early stages, there had been some preliminary mapping and work by teams to prepare for easier access at a later time. Much later. Soon Anna began to feel like she was buried and soon realized that there is absolutely NO light underground... And, given the type of cave that had been lost for so long--nobody knew how long--it soon hit her that there were no small cracks that allowed some bits of light where they were walking. Only blackness! Nor were there any living life that we all know on the surface or even in other caves--bugs, sounds of birds, bats moving. Nothing could live in this cave...
It wasn't long before they were in uncharted territory. That meant that the two guides/leaders had to install climbing equipment and teach Anna how to use it. Fortunately she had rappelled down rocks so was quite prepared for that task. What she was to come to dread was having to crawl through spaces with only the head light revealing what was right before her. Often, the threesome had to break up, using ropes to climb up or down, and then holding the ropes to expedite the next individual. Anna, thankfully, was placed in the middle of the experts... She felt safe--except from her own fears of being in extremely tight spaces... Oh, and just a little tidbit...because of the fragility of the environment, no human wastes were left behind, including human waste... which had to be properly packaged, depending on the type of waste it was... Yikes!
In fact, it was during a bathroom break that Frieda, a secretary at Anna's base of operations, had fallen... and now with various injuries including a possible head concussion. When the threesome finally found the location where the spelunker group was resting and waiting, Anna was quickly taken to let Frieda know that her friend was there... Frieda was still confused and dealing with the pain, but she recognized Anna, tightly held her hand and said to Anna, "It wasn't an accident..." Later, Anna saw that Freda would go in and out of full consciousness.
And, Anna found that Frieda didn't seem to remember what she had told her. However, since Anna was already a Ranger law officer, she was, thankfully, immediately on alert, knowing that this group of people could possibly have caused the accident... And, later, her murder... I'll talk about that more in the next part, coming soon...
It could be argued that the open areas of the caverns felt as much like a Disney creation as Space Mountain. There were no dangerous mazes, no precipitous heights, no tight squeezes. Still, it was a cave, and so Anna had passed on repeat trips. Given the inevitable nature of things, she would spend much of eternity underground; no sense rushing on down before the grim reaper called for her.
Her love of bats might have overcome her fear of enclosed spaces, but if one waited, the splendid little creatures were good enough to come out and be enjoyed in less stygian realms. This December she had been sent to CACA from her home park in Mesa Verde, Colorado. Trained teams consisting of park rangers from all over the region responded to catastrophes that ranged from hurricanes to presidential visits.
This time it was the injury of a caver. Had the caver been hurt in Carlsbad Cavern, extrication would have been simple: pop her in a wheelchair, roll her down to the snack bar and onto the elevator. She’d have been home before her mother knew she was missing. But this caver had been injured in Lechuguilla. The cave was on NPS lands near CACA’s headquarters. Lechuguilla was closed to the general public for the protection of both the cave and the visitors. Nearly ninety miles of the cave had been explored but it would be many years before it was fully mapped. Lech was a monster man-eating cave, dangerous to get into and harder to get out of. Two days into Lechuguilla, a member of the survey team had been hurt in an accident. Not surprisingly there’d been a contingent of experienced cavers at Carlsbad at the time, a small but dedicated group given to squeezing themselves into dark holes and living to write home about it.
Before Anna and her teammates had descended on the park, the cavers had begun doing what they did best: getting one of their own back. Procedures in place from the last, well-publicized rescue from Lechuguilla, in 1991, the NPS had mobilized in record time. Within four hours of the report, Anna had been on a plane to El Paso. By the time she reached Carlsbad more than two dozen others from the southwestern region had arrived. With the overhead team came the inevitable Porta-Johns, food trucks, and power struggles. On duty less than three hours, Anna was happy to sit out the political squabbles in Oscar Iverson’s snug little office. There, far from the madding crowd, she manned the phones in her official capacity as information officer, doling out approved statements to a press already panting for another media glut like that generated by the Baby Jessica case in Texas. When she was eight hundred feet below the surface of the earth and two days’ travel from the light of day, a grown woman in a limestone cave was almost as good as a baby in a well shaft.
For the past half hour reporters had been getting short shrift. Anna was reading. By chance she’d picked Trapped!, the story of caver Floyd Collins, off Iverson’s shelves. It detailed the gruesome death and media circus surrounding the entrapment of a caver in the 1920s. Collins had become wedged in a tight passage; his attempts to wriggle free had brought down loose dirt and rock, entombing him from neck to heels, his arms pinned at his sides. For thirteen days, friends had made the dangerous descent to feed him, while up above concessionaires sold food and souvenirs to an ever-growing crowd of vultures gathered in curiosity, sympathy, and morbidity. On the fourteenth day rains so softened the earth that the access tunnel collapsed. Collins was left to die alone. Scrawled in the margin of the book were the words “fact: wedge victims die.” Transfixed by the same dread a woman in a stranded VW might feel watching a logging truck bearing down on her, Anna was glued to the book. Iverson, Carlsbad’s cave specialist, gusted into her sanctuary, and she dropped Trapped!, glad to be rescued from its bleak pages. He waved her back into his ergonomically correct office chair and folded himself haphazardly over the corner of the desk. Housed in an old stone building built in the 1920s, the office was small, crowded by two desks, the walls lined with metal shelving and stuffed with books. Sprawled over the cluttered desktop, Oscar looked as homey and leggy as a spider in his web. Long limbs poked out the fabric of his trousers at knee and hip. His arms, seeming to bend in several places along their bony length, were stacked like sticks on his thighs. Come Halloween it would take only a little white paint to pass him off as a respectable skeleton. A mummy of the sere and unwrapped variety would be even easier. The man looked made of leather, hide tanned by the desert, hair coarse and straw-colored from the sun.
Anna guessed he was close to her age, maybe forty-five or -six. “Got some bizarre news,” he said, banging his heel softly against the metal of the desk. For whom the bell tolls, Anna’s mind translated the hollow ringing. “Now that the relatives have been notified we can release the name of the injured woman. Frieda Dierkz. And she’s asking for one Anna Pigeon.” Shit, Anna thought. It tolls for me. “Frieda?” she echoed stupidly. Iverson shot her a startled look. “Don’t you know her? From the intensity of the summons, I got the idea you two were best buds.” “Buds.” Anna’s mind was paralyzed, not so much by shock as by incongruity. Hearing Frieda’s name in reference to the victim of the rescue was akin to running into one’s old grammar school teacher in an opium den. “She’s the dispatcher at Mesa Verde,” Anna managed. “We’re . . . friends.” They were friends, fairly close friends, and Anna wondered why she’d sounded so half-hearted. “Dierkz was on the survey team,” Oscar said patiently, his washed-out hazel eyes trying to read Anna’s face. It wasn’t an earth-shattering revelation. Most cavers led other lives. They were geologists and physicists, beekeepers and bums; regular folks who had been bitten by an irregular bug that compelled them to creep beneath the skin of the world every chance they got. Anna had seen the photos of a helmeted and mud-bedaubed Frieda grinning out from nasty little crevices Anna wouldn’t go into for love or money, and she’d listened with half an ear about her upcoming “vacation.” She’d just not put two and two together. “What does she want me for?” Without much caring, Anna noted the disapproval sharpening Iverson’s gaze. She could guess where it came from: cavers helped cavers. It was an unwritten law of survival. Who else was going to fish them out of the god-awful places they insisted on pushing their way into? Iverson stared, and Anna stared back, refusing to apologize or explain. A moment passed, and his look softened. Perhaps he reminded himself she was not a caver but a mere mortal. “The injury is worse than first thought.” He spoke slowly as if Anna had a learning disability. His voice was low, gentling. She would have been irritated at the condescension had she not known Iverson always talked that way. “The caver who hiked out said a broken leg. Painful but not life-threatening. Apparently the rock that smashed her kneecap struck a glancing blow to her left temple as it fell. She was knocked unconscious but only briefly. We just got a second report. It was brought out by a member of another team surveying in the Great Beyond. He met up with one of Dierkz’s team in Windy City and brought out a message. She’s been slipping in and out of consciousness and has suffered some disorientation.” “Head injury,” Anna said. “Bad news.” “Bad news,” Iverson agreed. “Peter McCarty, a member of Dierkz’s team, is an M.D. in real life. That’s the good news. She’s got a doctor with her. McCarty recommended we get Ms. Dierkz what she wants. She’s agitated, and it is not helping her medical condition any. He feels it would soothe her if she could have a friend there.”
“A lady-in-waiting?” “Exactly.” A chilling image filled Anna’s mind: herself crouched and whimpering, fear pouring like poison through her limbs, shutting down her brain as the cave closed in around her. Adrenaline spurted into her bloodstream, and she could feel the numbness in her fingertips and a tingling as of ice water drizzling on her scalp. To hide her thoughts she rubbed her face. “Will you go?” Iverson asked.
Anna scrubbed the crawling sensation from her hair with her knuckles. “Just deciding what to wear.” Oscar looked at her shrewdly, the long, narrow eyes turning the color of bleached lichen. “Let me rephrase that: can you?” “I don’t know,” Anna answered truthfully. “Can I?” “Caving?” “None.” “Climbing?” “Some.” “Rappels sixty to a hundred fifty feet. Ascents ditto, naturally. Rope climbs with ascenders.” “I can do that.”
~~~~
I ran my Fire battery out for 3 days... Don't know how many days I'll take to share with all of you! LOL Watch for it!
All forms of sorrow and delight. All Solemn Voices of the Night... The words seemed to form from from the soughing of the wind in dying leaves. The mystical ululation of a loon, a sound that seemed to Anna to linger on the water long after the bird had ceased to call, punctuated the thought. Wadsworth? Frost?... Enjoying nostalgia, a luxury she seldom allowed herself, she lay back in the stern of the canoe as it drifted down the Fox River as light and quiet as a leaf on a pond. A new moon, a dime-sized wraith barely edged with light, was almost lost in a dense sea of glittering stars. This far north, this far from neon, fluorescent, incandescent and halogen, this far from television screens, stars and sky appeared simultaneously close and impossibly distant. If Anna let her fingers loose from where they relaxed around the gunwales, she might fall up and forever. There was nowhere she needed to be, no one she needed to serve. The owner of the convenience store at the put-in said the camp they'd planned on using had been burned over by a forest fire, so they stopped a few miles upstream. Anna reveled in the extra time to do absolutely nothing productive. She knew she should be missing Paul. A beter husband than Paul Davidson would only serve to make a woman feel chronically inadequate. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy his company; they'd been married several years and she was still crazy in love with the man. Catching his smile in a crowd never failed to make her heart skip a beat. The thing was, when she was alone in wild country--or as wild as country got in these United States--Anna didn't miss anyone, not her friends, not her dog or cat, not her sister, Molly, not her husband...
~~~
Destroyer Angel:
An Anna Pigeon Novel
By Nevada Barr
Anna Pigeon just may be my favorite female character. I've been her fan since she first appeared in Track of the Cat, working as a Forest Ranger... But this book? OMG, it totally blew me away! Imagine if you would, a group of women and girls who have gone camping. For Anna, it's her vacation. There's a purpose for the trip--to test equipment created by one of the women. It is to be tested by another of the women, who uses a wheelchair due to an accident... That's it! That's the Plot... Other than, of course, that somebody has hired a group of mercenaries to either bring back or murder everybody from the female group. Apparently the designer is worth millions; her daughter is with her. But are they going to be ransomed or killed as well? Readers really don't know... The book comes out on April Fools Day? Guess who gets fooled? Certainly not readers because I'm positive everybody who reads it will be fully satisfied...unless, they, too are mercenaries... I probably shouldn't have said that...a giveaway? Sure, but it's so obvious, why not celebrate it! Of course, it could also be...me...who is planting the April Fools joke because, in reality, the final outcome is not even included as the book ends... so chew on that for awhile... LOL
Perceptions not provable in a lab informed Anna that the pure nastiness of humanity was polluting the Fox River. Pure nasty humanity was the problem she had with Paul's God of Love. Too many people were involved. Had love of one's neighbor referred only to those with fur or feathers, she might have become a believer... A man's voice rumbled downriver, chasing the crying of a woman or girl. No barking or growling. Where was Wily? As he aged, his joints had grown stiff, but his hearing was still keen... Four men were visible; the nearest was a head taller than his companions... These were men who stalked alleys, bars, and city parks... Two teenaged girls, a slightly mad scientist, a paraplegic, and an old dog. Anybody who would prey on such as these would stomp kittens and dry-swallow ducklings. ~~~
Nevada Barr is an awesome writer. Her first book won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel and I've traveled with her all over the United States with her job, but I think the scariest for me was when the trip deep into a cave system took place. This one just may have been scarier...but it had some major humor scenes that lightened the horror... kinda... Anna, as you discovered in the excerpt above, was out on the lake by herself, when the initial camp invasion occurred. When the question came about the 5th woman, it was calmly announced that family issues had prevented her coming. That same woman took advantage of another situation and screamed "Stay the Hell Away!" But Anna had no weapons with her...how was she going to help?
If Anna went for help, it would be thirty-six hours minimum before it arrived. Thirty-six hours would be too late. Monsters weren't known for deferring gratification... With luck, and the good wood of a canoe paddle, a lone gunman could be taken down by five women. There would be a cost, but it could be done... Four gunmen was a different story. Still, Anna would stay, would watch. She would wait for an opening, a chance, then we would take it. Too many years rescuing lost hikers, mourning friends, and seeking justice for the dead had passed for her not to know she was, and always would be, her sister's keeper.
~~~
"Kill" was the word she used in her mind, not stop, disable, or detain but barbaric, irreversible, unforgivable killing. Time and life were the only true riches humans had. To waste either was a crime and a sin, if sin existed... Still, she would slaughter these men if he got a chance. She would kill them all. This was not the time or place for knocking people out, tying them up, then hoping they stayed knocked out and tied up. There were too many of them, too few of her, and the stakes were too high. When it was done, she would have unclean hands. Paul would smell the blood on them. Like Lady Macbeth, she'd see the stains in her dreams. Nightmares would be a small price to pay for Heath, E. Leah, and Katie. And Wily. She wouldn't forget Wily. ~~~
Other than the leader of the men who everybody called the Dude, there was a gangbanger from the city, a pedophile which probably wasn't discovered until he began his campaign to connect in some way with Katie, Leah's daughter. Leah is a wonderfully conceived character. She is
obviously brilliant, but somewhat like Bones in the program by the same name... But since Leah is a designer, she spends so much time alone and in complete concentration of her work, she has absolutely no people skills, even with her daughter, who is raised by her father and is almost estranged from her mother and definitely spoiled.
The final man, Sean, was described as being hard to read, but he was so creepy that nobody wanted to look at him long enough to learn more. It appeared that the Dude was the only one with any kind of vested interest in actually completing the job. When the Dude announced "We're not taking the cripple," one of the women quickly persuaded three of them that she had even more money than Leah and the three convinced the Dude to take her...
One key plot issue allows the whole activity to occur. A forest fire had destroyed the original site where the women were to camp...By the time everything started happening, the distance to get back to civilization was much greater. But how would that affect the men being willing to take "the cripple?"
I guess I'd better stop! I'd love to tell you much more, but that would prevent you from enjoying the book...what I've shared is mostly just from the first few chapters! I'll give you two clues--wolves and demons...LOL!
For me, this is undoubtedly the first I'm placing in my top ten favorite books for 2014! I loved it and easily give it a 10! 'Nuf said!
GABixlerReviews
Nevada Barr is the author of the New York Times bestselling novels featuring Anna Pigeon, a law enforcement part ranger. She won the Agatha Award for best first novel for Track of the Cat. Like her character, Barr worked for the National Park Service as a park ranger before resigning to write full time. She lives in New Orleans. NevadaBarr.Com
This is a different book, but it fits with some of my interests in this book...
It wasn’t the first time Jacobs had murdered. I could tell that by the look on his face when he did it. Pure snarky glee. A first-timer would have some trepidation, some hesitation, maybe a second where the last bit of their soul flames out. Not him. Alley was almost to the sidewalk and he swerved –a big sharp swerve across the oncoming.
Alley was almost four when he killed her, and the sweetest, drollest little spirit who ever lived. She moved with such grace I sometimes think she was made partly of air, a breeze that flowed effortlessly through the grass. Each of her moods was another face of the way the gods might look when they laugh, when they aren’t massacring folks... ~~~ Smoke and Mirrors
By Nevada Barr
When I saw Nevada Barr's name, I immediately downloaded what turned out to be a short story. I've been a fan of Nevada from The Track of the Cat way back when, so it's a normal purchase to read her, although I wouldn't normally review a short story... This is in memory of Alley...
But there really wasn't an option! When I learned what happened to Alley, I was all for what she had planned...
Wreaking Vengeance -- Thy name is Cat Lover....
You’re going to say I should have
called the police. Yeah, sure,
maybe if I lived in California or
Boulder, Colorado or some other
place where flunking the
psychopath test isn’t a
prerequisite to joining the police
force. In New Orleans people
who kill people don’t go to jail.
A person killing a cat would
just get me laughed at.
~~~
I loved this Spoof!
If readers take it, the
way Barr wrote it, they
will enjoy it as much as I did.
After all, cats are loved
just like family members
for many of us...
But if your cat is murdered, would you go to the police??? Even if you had been an eye witness? Well, Alley;s Mom knew she had not been the first that Hugh Jacobs had killed!
Thoughts of the death penalty began...
First, find out the name of that killer!
Check him out! He was on Facebook!
Surveillance!
Katie, my neighbor and I found out where he lived, and his big Hummer was parked there in front...An idea started to form...
He tried to run over another cat. This one, a grey-and-black tiger, probably less than a year old, was faster than Alley. It scooted under a fence and Jacobs hit the curb and busted a tire. I took it as a triumph for cats the world over. And a sign he would never stop... When it came, the plan came fully baked. New Orleans is crime-ridden from the politicians, to the police, right down to the drug dealers in Central City. I’d always looked at this as a bad thing. It came to me that, given the right circumstances, crime is not a curse. It is a resource. Just like Google. ~~~
Taking walks with Katie soon helped us get in better shape--a plus! Our routine was to walk up to his house and back... While we did that, I was also learning how to hot-wire a Hummer...
The plan really was ingenuous but of course, I'm not going to say anymore...not even about the little one that came to visit after it was over...
A little bit of humor goes a long way toward making us realize just how quickly some are prone to revenge, to violence...to do unto the other...
It's certainly not what this cat lover would do...
But I reallllllly enjoyed playing with the idea, thanks to Nevada Barr.
She rocks!
GABixlerReviews
My mother, pilot and mechanic, had this peculiarity; she wouldn't let a man who couldn't fly work on her airplanes. She believed if he couldn't fly, he couldn't understand the stresses and strains the machinery would be called upon to bear. When she became pregnant with me, she demanded a female OBGYN --a male doctor couldn't understand the stresses and strains the machinery would be called upon to bear. In 1952 such beings were rare. One was at last found in the tiny town of Yerington, Nevada. Mom flew to Yerington in a super cub every month to visit Dr. Mary. When the time was near, she stayed with the doctor and her husband on his sheep ranch. The consensus among all was that the baby, boy or girl, be named Nevada. This left me two choices: Vegas and the pole, or a life in the creative arts. I chose the latter.
Cover via Amazon "Anna noticed he didn't bother to tell the other cop hat he had a gun on one of the "newspaper people..." "He narrowed his eyes. He'd swallowed the newspaper bit as far as it went, but this was too much even for his big gut. Leaning forward, he ground his foot into the back of the little girl's head. She squealed; her twin echoed the cry... "Has he got one of those goddamned iPod things that can send his pictures to the Internet as soon as he takes them?" the chief asked and pressed harder on the little neck beneath his foot. This time the child did not scream. Anna hoped her neck hadn't snapped under the pressure..." ~~~
Burn: An Anna Pigeon Novel By Nevada Barr Outstanding, Powerful, and Astonishingly Real may all be used to "try" to describe and share about this Nevada Barr novel and it still would not tell you how amazing this book is... From the first novel by Barr, Track of the Cat, Anna Pigeon has been one of my most favorite characters--and, of course, Nevada Barr, a favorite author. I had missed the last few because of my schedule, but will soon remedy that!
But this book, and Barr's fairly new character, Claire, has moved her into one of the best writers dealing with one of today's major criminal issues. Barr not only deals with those criminals involved, but takes you directly into the reality of it all. This book is not for the squeamish or those who do not face what is happening in today's world--would you believe it? Kudos to author for Speaking out Against Child Sexual Abuse through her characters!
Claire was back from getting the cough syrup and ran to check her girls...they were not in bed. She searched everywhere and then ran to the neighbors. In the meantime, there was an explosion and their house was on fire.
When they carried out two small bodies and a man, assumed to be her husband, Claire was shocked and ran toward the house. They had not
been there! But she did find their dog and a neighbor with a small girl gave her a stuffed toy, saying "Alive" in her home language.
Of course, the police believed that Claire had killed them all. But Claire didn't believe the girls were dead. She had heard one other clue about New Orleans...and began her own search while she was wanted nationally for murder...
Anna, was already in Louisiana, having come on a vacation after having been hurt and needing rest...
But Anna was not that type and when she first noticed Jordan with a bunch of kids, she immediately wondered why he was hanging out with them. Then she discovered he was a neighbor, renting off of the woman with whom she was staying. One night he had furtively left his apartment and Anna followed long enough to watch him put something in the garbage and then return. Of course, Anna pulled it out--it was a dead pigeon and there were voodoo markings on the paper that held the bird... After trying to find out more about him, she decided to break into his apartment...there were pictures of little girls on the walls. Anna was upset but before she could decided what to do, Jordan came home!
This novel is about child theft and trafficking. Two women, one a public cop/ranger--the other a mother who will do anything to find her children. And when they get close enough, but have nobody they can trust, believing the police are involved...well, they go in anyway...
I consider this a must-read for those who wish to fight these issues in any way they can! Anna Pigeon is a woman who does just what should be done! If you haven't met her for awhile, be prepared for quite a few changes! I loved it!
GABixlerReviews
Note: I didn't realize that all of these would come when embedded...The one about Anna and God was the one I was going to share...I can just see Anna saying, "Well...God, what are you doing about this?!!!"
Biography
Nevada was born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras. Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir. Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN. For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio. During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers -- Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word. Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic. Her first novel, Bitterweet was published in 1983. The Anna Pigeon series, featuring a female park ranger as the protagonist, started when she married her love of writing with her love of the wilderness, the summer she worked in west Texas. The first book, Track of the Cat, was brought to light in 1993 and won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. The series was well received and A Superior Death, loosely based on Nevada's experiences as a boat patrol ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, was published in 1994. In 1995 Ill Wind came out. It was set in Mesa Verde, Colorado where Nevada worked as a law enforcement ranger for two seasons. The rest is, shall we say, HISTORY! Nevada's books and accomplishments have become numerous and the presses continue to roll, so in the interest of NOT having to update this page, books, awards, status on the New York Times Best Seller List -- and more -- will be enumerated with the relevant books else where on this website.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
