It's a historical mystery based on true events in the author's family. She had been researching a family story for years, realized she was not going to be able to write a non-fiction book out of it, so she fictionalized the events.
You are drawn along by her prose as much as for the curious events she details. McNamer knows the landscape like so many Montanans do, with their quiet, easy respect for place, and her prose reads that way.
Being a Montanan myself, i felt like these characters were my shirttail relations. Their stories, their habits, their stoic, steady, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other manner in the face of adversity. i recognized their stubbornness, their self-reliance, and that pride-of-self that isn't bragging. And i recognized men and women who held secrets. Weather out of shame, guilt, pride or honor, my people can hold secrets.
Not since Ivan Doig's McCaskill family have i felt this kind of kinship with a novel's characters.
Enough book reviews for now. Love to all.
