Then Came the Evening, by Brian Hart, $25. The story opens as Bandy Dorner, recently returned home from Vietnam, crawls out of the car he had driven into a canal to discover a bleeding cop lying on the nearby road.
Two short weeks afterward — and with no memory of the crash — Dorner finds himself pleading guilty to the crime.
Finally released from prison 20 years later, Dorner returns to his home state of Idaho. With his parents long dead, he is not surprised to find the family ranch in disrepair.
What he had not expected was that both his teenage son and his ex-wife would be caught up with private devils of their own. Aware that “nobody can hate like family,” Dorner still is determined to make a stab at creating a new life for all of them.
Though the plot is occasionally uneven, the author’s use of the Idaho landscape as a vehicle to convey family relationships — particularly between mother and son — is well-handled and effective.
“Then Came the Evening” is an insightful and understandably depressing exploration not only of the cost of bad decisions — paid both by those who make them and by the recipients — but also whether new beginnings are even possible.
Deep Creek, by Dana Hand, $25. Inspired by actual people and events, “Deep Creek” opens on a summer day in 1887 when Joe Vincent, a small-town judge, takes his daughter fishing on Idaho’s Snake River, there to find the bodies of more than 30 brutally murdered Chinese gold miners.
But when the miners’ San Francisco employer asks Vincent to investigate the case, Vincent hesitates, fearing for his daughter’s safety while he’s gone, only to reluctantly agree.
Accompanied by Lee Loi, an ambitious young company investigator, and Grace Sundown, a Metis mountain guide with a mysterious past, Vincent leads the way through city streets and the wilds of the Northwest in search of the truth that, ultimately, will end in a sham, race-based murder trial that changes all their lives.
Using the pen name of Dana Hand, authors Will Howarth and Ann Matthews have created characters strong enough to hold their own among the actual men and women involved in this intriguing and tragic slice of American history.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes regularly about new regional fiction releases.
