The Spirit Woman (Wind River Reservation Mystery) - Hardcover

Coel, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0425175979 ISBN 13: 9780425175972

Publisher: Berkley Hardcover, 2000

Synopsis

The search for a missing history professor, who vanished while visiting the Wind River Reservation, draws Vicky Holden and Father John O'Malley into a twenty-year-old mystery involving the disappearance of another historian and into a complex puzzle from the past involving a young Shoshone woman named Sacajawea. By the author of The Lost Bird.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Coel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of The Thunder Keeper, The Spirit Woman, The Lost Bird, The Story Teller, The Dream Stalker, The Ghost Walker, The Eagle Catcher, and several works of nonfiction. She has also authored many articles on the people and places of the American West. Her work has won national and regional awards. Her first John O'Malley mystery, The Eagle Catcher, was a national bestseller, garnering excellent reviews from the Denver Post, Tony Hillerman, Jean Hager, Loren D. Estleman, Stephen White, Earlene Fowler, Ann Ripley and other top writers in the field. A native of Colorado, she resides in Boulder.

Reviews

Now that Jesuit Father John O'Malley has just been reassigned from the Wyoming reservation he's called home for the last eight years, his undeclared love affair with Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden seems finally over in the sixth installment in this well-regarded series. Besides, Vicky's back with ex-husband Ben, an abusive alcoholic who says he's changed. Then Vicky receives a visit from old friend Laura Simmons, a historian who's convinced that the memoirs of 19th-century Shoshone heroine Sacajawea are stashed somewhere on the reservation. Years before, another female historian disappeared while searching for those memoirs, and within days of her arrival Laura is missing, too. Possibly Laura's disappearance has something to do with the arrival of her abusive boyfriend, but as Vicky and Father John investigate, they become convinced that someone on the reservation has come between Laura and the memoirsAif they exist. Coel stretches to form links between the "fragile" past and the shifting present, as Vicky realizes that she, Laura and various secondary characters are all daughters of SacajaweaAbattered women struggling to survive their battering men. It's an arresting theme, but overstated here, as the male characters are almost uniformly controlling, alcoholic, philandering failures who insist in falsettos that their victims understand their "rage." Readers will be engrossed in the expertly crafted suspense, but may wonder how much longer the passion between Father John and Vicky can smolder. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The wary attraction between Father John O'Malley and Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden reignites when the two team up to unravel a mystery involving the famous Native American heroine Sacajawea (The Lost Bird). Twenty years earlier, the Wind River Reservation was the site of Sacajawea researcher Charlotte Allen's disappearance. Now, Father John's dog has unearthed what might be the young historian's remains, while Vicky's college friend Laura Simmons surfaces, seeking the elusive and historically significant Sacajawea memoirs alluded to in Allen's journal. When Laura herself disappears, leaving behind disturbing clues at her rooming house, Vicky and Father John fear for the safety of anyone who gets in the killer's path. Meanwhile, Father John wrestles with resigning himself to a mandatory transfer off the reservation he has grown to love. Intriguing Arapaho and Shoshone history and realistic treatment of contemporary Native American issues make this cozy sixth installment in the series a winner.DSusan A. Zappia, Paradise Valley Community Coll., Phoenix
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

On a gray November afternoon, Father John O'Malley, head of the Jesuit mission on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, finds a decomposed body. Across the reservation, attorney Vicky Holden discovers that her friend, Laura Simmons, has disappeared while searching for Sacagawea's memoirs. O'Malley and Holden soon realize that their mysteries are connected and rush to solve them before more mayhem occurs. Coel's series' characters continue to be richly developed and compelling in this sixth installment, but Sacagawea steals the show. Her memoirs make a terrific McGuffin in this nicely paced and suspenseful mystery. Sacagawea's own experiences with domestic violence and her decisions, at key points in her life, to make her own journeys foreshadow the mystery's solution and the life choices made by Holden and other women in the tale. This series will continue to appeal to fans of other authors using Native American settings and characters (Hillerman, Doss, and Medawar, among them), but Coel blends frontier history, complex emotions, and western vistas in a way that is all her own. John Rowen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Berkley Hardcover
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0425175979
• ISBN 13: 9780425175972
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272