Descent
by Tim Johnston (Algonquin Books)
The Courtlands are an average family from Wisconsin on vacation in the Colorado Rockies when unspeakable tragedy hits. Caitlin, 18, goes for a run in the mountains with her younger brother, Sean, following behind on a bike. A monster truck comes out of nowhere and hits the boy, and Caitlin can’t call for help because her cellphone is out of range. She agrees to go with the driver to where she can make a connection — and disappears. For years.
The horror of Caitlin’s fate transforms her family. Her parents, whose marriage has always been shaky, separate, the mother going home while the father stays in Colorado, working on a ranch and never giving up the search for his daughter. Sean simply takes off.
Tim Johnston, a creative-writing professor at the University of Memphis who has a home in Colorado, writes a compelling thriller that is both creepy and literary. His character development is superb, especially his male characters (the women are less focused). The emotions of the father and brother are raw and painful. The kidnapper is multifaceted, an evil man given to acts of kindness. Even the minor characters, including the sheriff and his family, are sharp-edged.
“Descent” is not just a mystery. It is an emotional story of evil, fear, acceptance and irony. It is about recrimination as father, mother and brother blame themselves for not somehow preventing Caitlin’s disappearance. And ultimately, it is about a man’s ability to rise above his base self to find the heroic, of the extraordinary act of a man who finds himself better than he or anyone else thinks he is.
If “Descent” seems at first to be just another thriller, it quickly rises to a literary height with its complex story and multilayered ending.
Uranium Drive-In
by Bert Entwistle (Black Mule Press)
Presidential candidate John Taylor is gunned down in Denver, and Cripple Creek detective Jack Bannister and his crew try to find the would-be assassin. Things aren’t so simple, of course. As Taylor lingers unconscious, his family sorts through his vast cattle and energy empire, which reveals the family patriarch as a greedy, scheming man. His enemies include business associates as well as environmentalists opposed to a uranium refinery in Western Colorado.
The family itself is complicated — sons who don’t speak to each other and a mother dying of cancer who wants to tell the secrets she has kept from her son and grandchildren. There’s even Taylor’s sister, missing since she was a child, another mystery to be solved.
The real mystery, by the way, is the book’s title, “Uranium Drive-In.” There’s no drive-in in the book, and this really isn’t a story about uranium. But author Bert Entwistle took the picture of a dilapidated “Uranium Drive-In” signboard years ago and thought it would make a nifty cover. It does.
River of No Return
by David Riley Bertsch (Scribner)
Jackson Hole fishing guide Jake Trent reluctantly travels to Washington, D.C., at the urging of an old lover, Divya. A government agent, Divya wants Trent’s help in dealing with a secretive attempt by a scurrilous senator to track immigrants. Divya is mysterious, flirtatious and downright baffling, and Trent, a sort of James Bond with a backpack, gets fed up and heads back to Jackson.
Things there aren’t so hot. Esma, the girlfriend of Trent’s best friend, C.J., has been kidnapped and raped by two thugs, and the two men must find her in the remote Idaho wilderness. Moreover, the town sheriff has disappeared. Unknown to his deputy, the sheriff and his wife, who were lured to China to promote a Wild West village, are locked up by Xioa, an evil Chinese capitalist. Xioa wants to exchange them for his daughter, Meirong, who is missing in Jackson Hole.
Trent has his own baggage, including a violent past and a relationship going nowhere with an attractive ranger. Against his better judgment, he is lured back into Divya’s scheme by her appeal to his sense of doing what’s right. Of course, he’d rather be fishing.
This is the second Jake Trent novel, written by David Riley Bertsch, himself a Jackson Hole fly-fishing guide. The story is filled with twists and turns and is set against a spectacular mountain setting in Wyoming and Idaho, the sort of places you’d find in a Nevada Barr novel. While there is plenty of modern technology employed in the attempt to find the missing Meirong, “River of No Return” nonetheless reminds readers of what can go wrong out of cellphone range.
The Canyon
by Stanley Crawford (University of New Mexico Press)
Scotty, a pubescent boy, spends his post-world War II summers at the rundown family lodge in the Colorado mountains, near his father’s silver mine. Although Scotty doesn’t know it at the time, his summers are idyllic — swimming, exploring the canyons and meadows, studying wildlife. The only sour note is the horde of visitors who descend. They include children his age who intrude on his solitude — a cousin, a bully, a girl whose nose is perpetually in a book. He’s only dimly aware of the affairs of adults, including a decline in the mine’s output, a looming bankruptcy, and the bickering of people who don’t like each other much,
“The Canyon” is a quiet look at a “good kid” meeting childhood challenges as he comes of age in a simpler time.
