Women's propensity to share confidences is universal.' Harrison

For fans of Anna Pigeon, if you are curious as to how she became involved with the National Park Service, this is the story of how that came about.

Anna is in her first days with the NPS. She's age thirty-five and just off a bus from New York where she leaves some heartbreaking memories.

She gets a job as a seasonal employee doing mundane work and living with a group of other seasonal employees.

Being a nature lover, on her day off she decides to go for a hike. She sees something but is hit on the back of the head and wakes up at the bottom of a dry well, naked and with no clear memory of what happened. She also has a word scratched into her leg which she can't figure a reason for.

She continues to call for help and wonders why no one comes to find her. However, her clothes have been removed from her room and the other employees figure she didn't care for the job and went back to New York.

The interest in the story is to learn about Anna's early life. It is also to see the relationships between other seasonal employees living in close proximity. Much of the action is centered in the Lake Powell area which is a waterway created after a dam was built. For those really interested, I did a web search of Lake Powell and the party boats that people rent there, it's truly beautiful.

Nevada Barr is a former Nation Park Service Ranger and she speaks from experience. It is also enlightening to read about what Park Rangers and other employees come across in their dealings with the public and with the politics of the National Park Service.

It was a good story and one I'd recommend to Nevada Barr fans and those interested in the outdoors. The characters are well developed and Anna is a very likable character as are a number of the other employees she encounters. There are a number of surprises that add to the entertainment value of the story.