The Dinosaur Hunter, by Homer Hickam
With “The Dinosaur Hunter,” author Homer Hickam shifts from the Hollywood setting familiar to faithful readers of his earlier books to the ranchlands of Montana.
There, Mike Wire, a former homicide detective who yearns for a quieter life, accidentally finds dinosaur fossils he is sure any museum or fortune hunter would treasure. But when a paleontologist and his young assistants appear to join the dig, Mike senses trouble in the offing. Using his skill as a cop, he sets out to protect the people and land he has come to love.
A well-paced, first-rate read.
Elkhorn Tavern, by Douglas C. Jones
Set in the Civil War and seen through eyes of a woman left alone to protect her two teenage children, “Elkhorn Tavern” draws a powerful picture of one family’s struggle to survive in the worst of the Civil War.
With her husband in the Confederate Army, Ora Hasford has been left to tend their farm and raise their two kids. Yet she knows that only a short distance in the Pea Ridge Mountains, where armies prepare for the inevitable battle, soldiers write letters on scraps of paper and pass them on to farmers to mail. And the Hasford family is left unprotected in what will prove to be one of the worst battles in the West.
A straightforward, powerfully told account of a war that still haunts the nation.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes regularly about new regional fiction.
