Nevada Barr

Fiction 2012 | 368 pages

I am probably not the only one amongst us who has read a number of Anna Pigeon books by Nevada Barr.  Ms. Barr's first Pigeon book of 19 was written in 1993.  Anna is a sleuth who solves mysteries in National Parks.  She is a strong and delightful character in beautiful and inspiring settings.

The Rope is the 17th book in the series and is essentially a prequel.  Nevada Barr fans have been asking her to write a book about how Anna Pigeon gets started as a solver of mysteries, and this is her answer.  Anna finds herself working as a seasonal worker in Glen Canyon National Recreational area after the death of her husband, and her desire to stop being a stage manager for off-Broadway plays.  When she arrives, she is pasty, skinny, weak, and uneducated about the wilderness.

When we first meet Anna, she is at the bottom of a deep sandstone hole in the desert in Glen Canyon.  She is completely naked, drugged, molested, and dying of dehydration. The first third of the book is a macabre story about her time trapped in this hole.  I began to wonder if the entire book was going to be set here, in which case it may just have been too gruesome for me to complete reading.  But Anna finds her way out, and, for the rest of the book, searches for the perpetrators who nearly killed her, and did in fact kill a woman named Kay whom Anna finds buried in her hole (which she calls a "jar."). We get to learn about Anna's motivations, proclivities, personality, decision-making, courage, resourcefulness, wisdom, and grief.

This is a marvelous Nevada Barr, with her crisp, tight writing and creative murders.  If you have not read a Nevada Barr, this would be a fine place to start!  If you have read this author, you can pick up The Rope anytime.  Except it is so popular there are wait lists at the libraries!  Yes, I recommend The Rope for your reading pleasure and to feed your imagination.

October 2024