{"id":3830,"date":"2020-10-15T08:40:07","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T15:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3830"},"modified":"2020-10-15T08:42:18","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T15:42:18","slug":"alice-henderson-a-solitude-of-wolverines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/alice-henderson-a-solitude-of-wolverines\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Henderson: A Solitude of Wolverines"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This book will be published October 27, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

If this book isn\u2019t the birth of a long running series, I would be stunned.\u00a0 A definite relative of Nevada Barr\u2019s long running and beloved Anna Pidgeon series, Alice Henderson has created an adventure suspense mystery with a foundation in the natural world.\u00a0 While Anna Pigeon is a parks ranger, Alex Carter is a biologist who studies endangered species in their dwindling habitats.\u00a0 Like Anna, however, Alex is definitely a bad ass.<\/p>\n

Proving her hand with action scenes, the book opens with Alex attending an event celebrating the saving of a natural habitat within a city.\u00a0 Her discovery of over a hundred species of birds who called the area home has prompted the city of Boston to create a protected space, upsetting plans for a development project.\u00a0 Alex is due to be interviewed by a TV reporter \u2013 during the interview the two women are shot at and while Alex escapes, she is traumatized by the incident.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Alex gets a call that very night asking if she\u2019s willing to go to Montana to study wolverines.\u00a0 She has recently separated from her boyfriend and hates the city \u2013 she snaps up the opportunity and heads to Montana the next morning.\u00a0 She\u2019s to live in an abandoned ski lodge and work the land trust that it sits on to see if wolverines<\/a> are present.<\/p>\n

The tension in this novel, and I imagine in any future novels, comes from the hostility some feel for things like land trusts that prevent development or, as is common in Montana, cattle grazing.\u00a0 The residents of tiny Bitterroot seem generally hostile and suspicious, and the only place Alex feels safe is out in the woods.<\/p>\n

A real strength of this book, aside from the character of Alex, is the specific details of how animals in the wild are tracked.\u00a0 Alex uses something called a hair trap and a remote camera to capture, hopefully, evidence of wolverines.\u00a0 The whole set up of the trap and her encounters with wolverines in the wild are pure magic.<\/p>\n

Henderson throws in a great deal of suspense and the element of Alex not being able to really trust anyone in town makes her solitary nature, ability to tinker with motors and all things mechanical, as well as her mother\u2019s teaching her from a young age how to survive in a wilderness situation, a rich protagonist.<\/p>\n

At one point her ex, now a corporate lawyer, turns up to try and convince her to come back to Boston with him.\u00a0 The tension between the two of them is a mirror of the greater tension in Alex\u2019s universe \u2013 that of nature preservation versus development.\u00a0\u00a0 When he leaves \u2013 I don\u2019t think this is a spoiler as they are so obviously unsuited \u2013 Alex really feels free.<\/p>\n

I thought this was a wonderful, suspenseful novel with a fantastic main character and a fascinating background of endangered species preservation.\u00a0 I also thought it had some first mystery pitfalls \u2013 it\u2019s a little too stuffed with elements.\u00a0 The cadence of the narrative isn\u2019t as smooth as I imagine it will be in future books.\u00a0 However, this is a really outstanding series kickoff, a great read, and a classic character in the making.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book will be published October 27, 2020. If this book isn\u2019t the birth of a long running series, I would be stunned.\u00a0 A definite relative of Nevada Barr\u2019s long running and beloved Anna Pidgeon series, Alice Henderson has created an adventure suspense mystery with a foundation in the natural world.\u00a0 While Anna Pigeon is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[403,440,442,406,439,13,291,441],"class_list":["post-3830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-adventure","tag-alice-henderson","tag-montana","tag-nature","tag-nevada-barr","tag-suspensethriller","tag-william-morrow","tag-wolverines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3830"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3834,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3830\/revisions\/3834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}