It’s a great time of year to think about traveling to new
places. How about taking a virtual visit to the national parks with the
adventurous park ranger Anna Pigeon? She
notices when things are amiss and finds the answers to each exciting national
park mystery. The author, Nevada Barr,
was a park ranger for several summers and writes her stories with actual
knowledge of the national parks system. Her
series of 18 mysteries begins at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in
Texas, loops through the Statue of Liberty National Monument in New York to the
Nachez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New
Mexico, to name just a few. Barr uses
Michigan as the setting for two of her stories, both taking place on Isle
Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior.
A Superior Death (1994) is a summertime mystery located in the
chilly depths of Lake Superior off the
shores of Isle Royale. This is the
second book of the series, so the young Anna Pigeon checks on a routine diving
permit and stumbles upon an unauthorized search for sunken treasure in the
shipwrecks offshore. She also discovers a recently dead body near a shipwreck
which leads to intense underwater suspense. Anna finds a little romance and a
lot of murder during her stay at the park.
A Winter Study (2008) is Barr’s second Isle Royale page-turner,
and takes place during the winter with a She and two scientists from homeland security
are joining the wolf study team to observe the wolf pack, each for their own
objective. Pigeon is collecting data in
order to introduce wolves into the Rocky Mountain National Park. The team from
homeland security wants to assess the possibility of opening Isle Royale in the
wintertime and its implications for border relations with Canada. The isolated setting, cold temperatures, and
the suspicious death of a team member combine to place everyone on alert that a
killer is among them.
more mature Anna Pigeon.
The newest novel, Destroyer Angel (2014) is set in the
Boundary Waters Wilderness Area north of Ely, Minnesota on the border between
the U.S. and Canada. Anna travels to pristine wilderness for a canoeing
vacation with friends, one of whom designs recreational equipment for disabled
individuals, and another who is a paraplegic. Somebody’s past catches up with
them as the group is kidnapped and Anna has to use all her park ranger survival
skills and knowledge of the outdoors to keep herself alive long enough to
rescue her friends. The heartless nature
of the villains in this adventure is juxtaposed against the spiritual beauty of
the wilderness. As always, Nevada Barr’s adventures are available in Adult
Fiction on the main floor. Many are also
recorded on CD in the audio book section or available digitally through the
library’s website – www.pwpl.info.
Lynette Suckow
Reference Desk
No comments:
Post a Comment