In the Heart of the Canyon,
by Elisabeth Hyde
$24.95.
As Hyde’s novel opens, the reader might be deceived into believing its story is simply a pleasant account of a whitewater float trip down the Colorado River.
JT Maroney, a veteran guide and the trip leader, will make all the important day-to-day decisions, from where to stop for lunch to where to put in at the end of the day. He has guided more than 100 raft trips down the river. Now he has the job of gathering the 12 travelers to orient them to the two-week trip. Over the years, he has developed a style aimed at both putting the guests at ease and making it plain he is in charge. With full responsibility for all decisions, he figures he’s good for maybe two more trips.
A glance at the group and he decides its members seem to be about what he had expected: a man in his late 20s who is unemployed and escaping his family; a biology professor who has given the trip to herself as her 50th-birthday present; a moody and hugely overweight teenager; a Harvard professor; an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s and his wife; and a younger couple.
Once on the river, the first few days prove more or less routine. But the stifling heat begins to take its toll in ways even JT had failed to anticipate. A dog appears. In his 124 previous trips, JT had never seen a dog along the river. Dogs were not allowed. But there he is and JT is not going to get rid of him.
The group settles in. There are the usual small victories, like the day one of the travelers discovers he knows how to swim, and the fat girl whose mother always tells her she looks fine when she knows she never looks fine works up the courage to dive into an underwater cave.
But on this trip JT realizes he is a phony. When he takes people down the river, he knows he breaks something in them — a habit, a phobia — that needs reconstruction, but never offers them a way to do it. He is, he realizes, nothing more or less than a “wrecking ball.”
Using the rafting trip with its mix of characters and dangers and isolation as the backdrop, the author explores what makes her characters tick and comes up with a poignant, first-rate story.
Pass Creek Valley, a Western Duo,
by Wayne Overholser
$25.95.
Overholser opens the first of his duo with “Stage to Death,” when Bill Mason, a stage guard, is readying himself for the run ahead. Once a wild young hellion in the Colorado mining camps, Mason has moved to Oregon, where he has a spotless record. So he is startled when someone approaches him in a saloon and calls him Billy Bock, a name he had used in his days as a bank robber but one no one here knows.
With the stage about to leave for Tamarack, he fears the law will find out about his past unless he allows the infamous Domino Kid to hold it up. To make matters worse, the lovely schoolteacher, Laura Benton, will be a passenger. And the trip proceeds to hold more surprises than even he had expected.
The second story, “Pass Creek Valley” opens as Kim Logan, professor and master of guncraft and the last of the old bunch, watches an approaching stage with more than a little trepidation. For the last year he has worked as a troubleshooter for the great Clawhammer Ranch, owned by Peg Cody, and locked in a desperate struggle with Hank Dunning, the owner of the HD, who intends to take over the range.
But the struggle is further complicated because Peg Cody not only intends to take over the HD but also wants to force the small ranchers off their land. To stop her, Kim must meet the incoming stage and a man named Yuma Bill said to have a bundle of money intended to help the local banker before the riders of the HD beat him to it.
With their well-drawn characters and situations true to history, both stories are among Overholser’s best.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes regularly about new regional fiction.
