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At 45 Anna Pigeon,forest ranger, needs to look to the future. She applies for a promotion and is appointed the district ranger in the Port Gibson district of the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. With Taco, her black Lab and Piedmont, her orange tiger cat, she leaves Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and travels across the country in her Rambler and a UHaul containing all her worldly goods. Her arrival at Port Gibson is met with resentment and hostility from the field rangers under her command. No woman should be their supervisor. They doubt her ability to handle the job. She has problems with Randy Thigpen and Bart Dinkin who ignore her calls for backup, seriously jeopardizing her safety several times. Someone puts an alligator in her car port, causing her Lab to lose a leg when he wrestles with the alligator in an attempt to defend Anna. Her attempts to organize her station and cope with the prejudices are delayed when the body of a young girl, Danielle Posey, is discovered in an abandoned country cemetery. The teenager's head is covered with a sheet and has a noose around her neck. Immediate speculation is possible KKK connection. Investigating the murder with Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna has too many suspects: Danielle's prom date who is jealous of her new boy friend; Danielle's prejudiced brother who is angry at her dating a black college student; Danielle's mentally ill mother who has insured her face for a beauty contest; Lockley Wentwood, black college football star whose future would be jeopardized if his relationship with Danni were revealed; a trio of Civil War re-enacters who are connected with a long forgotten legend of infidelity and murder. Her efforts are frustrated by local prejudice against her as a woman and a Northerner. Deep South has captured the atmosphere of the Mississippi Natchez Trace. You can almost feel the spider webs, the mosquitos, the ticks; feel the humidity and feel the Kudzu growing. You can understand Anna's need to adjust after the crisp clear air of Mesa Verde. The barely hidden prejudices of some of the Southerners is shown in the development of some of the characters. Nevada Barr has drawn on her own experience as a ranger to delve into the relationships of the rangers and their superiors and to probe some of the politics in the Service. This book holds the reader's attention from the first few pages and the suspense doesn't let up until the end. It is well-written; the characters are realistic: you hate some of them, respect some of them and tolerate some of them. This is the eighth in the Anna Pigeon series. It is worthy of your attention. Having read this, the eighth, you will want to go back and read the previous seven.
Reviewed by Barbara Buhrer, August 2001
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