Destroyer Angel by Nevada Barr MYS Bar

You’d think someone whose career keeps her out in the wilderness would prefer a vacation to a pampering resort in the Caribbean, or maybe a visit to her sister and some Broadway plays in New York City. Not U.S. Park Service ranger Anna Pigeon. No, her idea of a restful few days with the girls is camping in the rugged, undeveloped Iron Range area of northern Minnesota.

Anna takes her commitment to the outdoors very seriously. The group of five only pack in what they need for the few days in the wilderness, and that means absolutely no cell phones or any other electronics. Anna’s companions are her very dear friend Heath, a paraplegic, Heath’s 15-year-old daughter Elizabeth, Leah, a brilliant but socially-underdeveloped designer/engineer of outdoor equipment for physically-handicapped individuals, and Leah’s 13-year-old spoiled and immature daughter Katie. The only male on the trip is Heath’s dog Wiley.

On the second night out, Anna slips into her canoe and floats downriver for a few moments of relaxation and solitude. In her absence, the campsite is invaded by four bad-news kidnappers looking for wealthy Leah and an eventual lucrative payoff. But it’s more than money that drives “the dude.”  To complicate matters, he’s stuck with three idiots as his support team, and the campsite the women were supposed use had been devastated by a recent fire, so getting them out of the wilderness was going to be a larger task than the original plan had considered.

A nifty lie on Heath’s part about the absence of the fifth woman gives Anna the opportunity to remain an unknown adversary/protector, and the bulk of the story tells of the trip through the wilderness by the party of eight, trailed at a safe distance by Anna and the dog, who wait for opportunities to improve the odds for the other women.

This latest novel by Nevada Barr is gritty, brutal and often disconcerting. But what Barr does extremely well is open up her characters to the reader for close understanding of what drives each of them to act the way they do. Riveting.