Nevada Barr, one time park ranger turned writer has been writing the Anna Pigeon series for years. Nevada's books, accomplishments, and awards too are numerous to list here. ‘Flashback’ is the eleventh novel (the 15th novel is set to be published early 2009) and debuted at number 5 on the NY Times bestseller list in 2003.
Barr's series featuring National Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon came highly recommended to me so I was looking forward to this book. Barr spends a lot of time describing the National Park setting but I never was able to picture it in my mind. There are two stories interwoven in this book and that didn't work well for me. In the present day story, I felt like Barr tried to introduce more characters than she was able to flesh out. Unfortunately, this one didn't sell me on Barr.
Type: Mystery/Fiction, 416 pages, paperback
Synopsis:
Running from a proposal of marriage from Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory ranger on remote Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, a small grouping of tiny islands in a natural harbor seventy miles off Key West. This island paradise has secrets it would keep; not just in the present, but in shadows from its gritty past, when it served as a prison for the Lincoln conspirators during and after the Civil War. Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for an occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper. When her sister, Molly, sends her a packet of letters from her great-great-aunt who lived at the fort with her husband, a career soldier, Anna's fantasy life is filled with visions of this long-ago time.When a mysterious boat explosion - and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts - keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. Cut off from the mainland by miles of water, poor phone service, and sketchy radio contact, and aided by one law-enforcement ranger, Anna must find answers or weather a storm to rival the hurricanes for which the islands are famous.
Reviews:
Library Journal... When Anna Pigeon flees a marriage proposal for ranger service on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, she finds that the past (the island was once a prison) and the present (an exploding boat scatters unidentified body parts) are eerily conjoined.
Library Journal... When Anna Pigeon flees a marriage proposal for ranger service on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, she finds that the past (the island was once a prison) and the present (an exploding boat scatters unidentified body parts) are eerily conjoined.