Hard Truth (An Anna Pigeon Novel)
by Nevada Barr
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nevada BarrEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-02-07
ISBN: 0425208419
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Berkley
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780425208410
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of Hard Truth (An Anna Pigeon Novel)
Book Review: Dark, complicated...and true to its title
Summary: 4 Stars
There are 76 other reviews out there as I type this, most rehearsing the plot fairly well, most agreeing that this is one dark, horrible, terrifying book, so I'll skip that part, since this is indeed one dark, horrible, terrifying book. I took it to the beach planning on "beach reading" and was scarred for days. It's easily the equivalent in mystery of Hambly's Fever Season, or, in more literary fiction, Morrison's Beloved: it really is that frightening.
The issue, I think, is whether Barr gets something, and gives us something, out of all that darkness and horror and violence that makes it worthwhile. That is, is there a real reason for it? Or is it just gratuitous nasties, a bad case of let's see which author can out-gruesome the others? I think it's the former, even though I don't see myself re-reading this one for a long time. What does Barr get? Look at the title. Like Morrison, she gets a hard truth about what we're capable of, and she gives it to us.
Which truth? I hear you cry. The one the movies lie about, the one soldiers learn in SERE school, the one none of us wants to believe: that if someone hurts us enough, we will do anything, and become anything, the torturer wants of us. We will bark like dogs, lick our urine off the floor, make love to our torturer and lavish him with love and gratitude for not hurting us more, wait for his permission to escape by killing ourselves and thank him for the mercy...and mean it. There is very little in us, or in most of us, anyway, that can't be destroyed by someone willing to take on the job in a serious way: not our loves, our identities, certainly not our human dignity. That triumph-of-the-human-spirit thing is by and large the exception and not the rule. What the children do in this book--refuse to give up their torturer because they believe in his power over them, leave their friend in his grip to save themselves--is what most of us would do. It's no wonder we don't like to hear it.
That's an awful thing to say, which is why I'm scarred by the book. But I believe it's basically true, the hard truth, one of the hardest. It seems that Barr knows it, and I suspect that maybe she's fed up with all the narratives in which the heroes overcome the unspeakable to triumph over the villain with a couple of choice bon mots. Yes, everyone at the end of this book is damaged--Ranger Pigeon the least so--but they would be, and they should be, though the villain is defeated and there is some hope of redemption nonetheless.
So, you know...the issue of the search dogs is a good point, and if you feel the world's bad enough without dwelling on how bad it can get, you really shouldn't read this. There are some pretty nifty baby wolves, though.
Summary of Hard Truth (An Anna Pigeon Novel)
Just days after marrying Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon moves to Colorado to assume her new post as district ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. When two of three children who'd gone missing from a religious retreat reappear, Anna's investigation brings her face-to-face with a paranoid sect--and with a villain so evil, he'll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on endRanger Anna Pigeon, Nevada Barr's series heroine (High Country, Flashback), meets her match in this engrossing new thriller set in Rocky Mountain National Park. Heath Jarrod is a climber now confined to a wheelchair after an accident that left her crippled, angry and depressed: "For a few months after the fall, she'd played Christopher Reeve, pretending to be as optimistic, as cheerful, but she was a lousy actor and ... she'd rung down the curtain. The first of many curtains." But there's a second act in her future that begins when two terrified, half-naked little girls stumble out of the woods and into Heath's "handicamp"--they've been missing for weeks, but are too traumatized to tell Heath and then Anna where they've been, or what happened to the third girl who disappeared with them. Beth, the younger, wins Heath's heart; with Anna, she pursues an investigation that leads to a bizarre, quasi-religious cult that's set up its headquarters just outside the park's boundaries, and the youth group leader who'd taken the girls into the wilderness and returned without them. Is Robert Proffit the gentle, spiritual man Anna's seasonal law enforcement agent Rita Perry thinks he is, or a twisted rapist and probable killer whose prayers for the innocent girls in his charge mask his evil nature?
The mysteries keep piling on, as one gruesome discovery leads to another, and Heath begins to realize that even though she's lost the use of her legs, the same tenacity that made her one of the world's leading mountaineers has even more rewarding summits to achieve. Barr builds the suspense skillfully and drives the narrative to a bloody, violent, and unexpected conclusion in one of her best mysteries to date. --Jane Adams
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