Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Posts Tagged ‘missing hiker’

Two women in the Colorado wilderness, one missing and the other trying to find her.  They couldn’t be less similar, but the search that connects them is stronger than the differences between them.

Amy Raye Latour is elk hunting in the woods with two friends.  Amy Raye, although skilled with a rifle, prefers to hunt with a compound bow.  Her husband and two children are at home, and now she’s preparing to leave her two fellow hunters at the camp and search for the elk herself.  Without telling Aaron or Kenny, she packs up food and water for the day and drives away in Aaron’s truck.  She thinks she’s prepared for every eventuality, but she’s not.

Pru Hathaway works for the Bureau of Land Management as an archaeological law enforcement ranger.  It’s a job she describes as being a police officer of the past, looking for disturbances to the land and the possible looting of historic artifacts.  Along with her dog Kona, she is part of a team that sometimes has to search for missing hikers and hunters, people who underestimate the difficulties of the Colorado terrain,  don’t carry the necessary food and water, or don’t listen to the area weather forecasts.  And sometimes, even when the hikers or hunters take all the proper precautions, they still run into trouble.  That’s what happened to Amy Raye.

The reader is pulled into the lives of these two women.  Amy Raye is a woman with a very troubled history, with many secrets she has kept from her husband.  It’s partly this past life that she’s running from, not certain she wants to continue her life with him or if she even deserves to, given all that she’s been hiding over the years.

Pru, too, is working through some issues.  She’s the single mother of a teenage boy, the result of a one-night stand.  Successful in her career, she’s facing the idea of being alone as her son will be leaving for college in the not-too-distant future.

Breaking Wild follows Amy Raye and Pru, the former fighting with all her strength to get back to civilization after her pride and a series of bad judgment calls leave her alone and injured in the wilderness, the latter determined to find the missing woman, or at least find her remains.  As the days stretch out into weeks, a happy outcome is unlikely, but the determination of both women is very strong.

The sense of place in this novel is wonderful, with the reader swept through harrowing conditions.  The author, herself skilled in backpacking, snowmobiling, and hiking through the woods surrounding her former home in Colorado, makes both the incredible survival skills of Amy Raye and the persistence of Pru come alive.

You can read more about Diane Les Becquets at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.