"The Loop" by Nicholas Evans is set in the wilds of Montana in the small town of Hope, high in the Rocky Mountains.
A lone wolf comes down from the mountains to attack live stock on rancher Buck Calder's property. The wolf kills his daugher Kathy's dog before advancing on the baby buggy where her infant son lies sleeping. Kathy manages to scare the wolf off but the incident only serves to incite the ranchers to retaliate.
Over a century before wolves had been hunted to extinction and although they are now protected by law there are many in the town that are prepared to break the law and slaughter wolves that have been re-introduced into the area.
Biologist Helen Ross is called in to diffuse the situation by Dan Prior, head of the local office of the US Fish and Wildlife Service Wolf Recovery team, they've worked together before.
Together they try to save the wolves with help from an unlikely source; Luke Calder, son of their main opponent.
Nicholas Evans is also the author of "The Horse Whisperer" which I read many years ago, I enjoyed reading "The Loop", much more.
"A Place Of Secrets" by Rachel Hore is set in Norfolk, England.
Recently widowed art historian and auctioneer Jude lives and works in London.
As a child she suffered from dreadful nightmares, one night she dreams the dream again.
Soon after, she receives a request to value a collection of manuscripts, books and scientific instruments belonging to an 18th century amateur astronomer, Anthony Wickham,
The collection is housed in the beautiful library of Starbrough Hall, home to the Wickham family for several generations.
Jude's family is also from the area, her grandmother grew up in the Gamekeepers Cottage at Starbrough, and she is invited to stay at Starbrough Hall as a guest of the present owner and his family.
When not working on the collection she is able to spend time with her grandmother, sister Claire and young neice Summer, but Jude is troubled to learn that Summer is also having nightmares which sound very similar to one that she herself had as a child.
As she unravels the history behind the amazing collection, that Wickham and his adopted daughter Esther have amassed, she becomes aware of unexplained connections between her own family and the Wickhams.
The twists and turns of the storyline kept me glued to the very last page.
Finally, Made In The U.S.A. by Billie Letts, is the story of two runaway children.
Fifteen year old Lutie and her nerdy little brother Fate.
After their so called step mother, Floy, falls down dead in the check out line at WalMart, Lutie & Fate head to Las Vegas, in Floy's beat up Pontiac, to find the father who deserted them all some years before.
As you can imagine life does not treat them well, living out of the Pontiac, eating food from homeless shelters and dumpsters, being preyed upon by sadistic employers, drug dealers, pornographers and street wise bullies.
There is a happy ending, although it isn't the one that Lutie expected.
I found the book quite disturbing and a terrible indictment of how children can fall through the cracks of society and be left to fend for themselves in dire circumstances.
In an interview with Billie Letts, at the end of the book, I was shocked to learn that over 800,000 children in the US went missing in the year before the interview took place and that 1.3 million young people were living on the streets of America as a result of running away, or homelessness, in that same period.
I listed all three books on bookmooch
but as I write this post
both A Place of Secrets and Made In The USA
have already been mooched.
both A Place of Secrets and Made In The USA
have already been mooched.
