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BREAKING WILD
by Diane Les Becquets
Berkley, February 2016
309 pages
$26.00
ISBN: 042528378X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

BREAKING WILD is a very powerful story about a bow hunter who is lost in the wilds of Colorado in the dead of winter. Amy Raye Latour has left her husband and children at home while she heads to the woods with two men (one a current lover and one an ex-lover) for an end-of-season hunting trip. On their last morning, she gets up early, takes the truck, and heads out for one last attempt at an elk. When she does not return, the men call in her disappearance and a search begins. The only sign that the searchers find is her handgun, with one bullet missing, and her bloody hat. It's not clear what happened to her, but it seems very clear that she didn't make it after several days go by without a sign.

Pru Hathaway, a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) archaeological law enforcement ranger, was a part of that initial search. When her friend, the local Sheriff Colm, begins to suspect suicide as the cause of Amy Raye's disappearance, Pru feels somehow compelled to try to find evidence to refute that conclusion. Over the course of the next two and half months, she makes several visits to the area to further investigate. Meanwhile, Colm investigates the possibility that either Amy Raye's husband or one of her lovers was involved in her death.

What Pru and Colm don't know, but the reader does, is that Amy Raye is alive and trying desperately to stay that way, even in the harshest of environments. The book is written with alternating chapters written from Pru's first-person perspective and a third-person description of Amy Raye's attempts at survival. At heart, this book is a survival story, with deep introspection on the part of both women. The women's characters are extremely well written, but Amy Raye, with all her faults and the harrowing circumstances she faces, becomes the true center. The book reads as a thriller, and I found myself staying up very late to reach the suspenseful conclusion.

The descriptions of the Colorado winter, the animals that live in the harsh environment, and even the oil and gas industry that plays around the edge of the wilderness are both accurate and beautifully drawn. There is a love of the locale as well as a recognition of its dangers in Les Becquets' writing. The unique backgrounds of each of the main characters, coupled with a sense of isolation and loneliness, likewise ring true. The writing is evocative, and this is a book where there is no argument about whether plot or characterization is stronger. They both capture the reader, making this an extremely difficult book to put down.

§ Sharon Mensing is the Head of School of Emerald Mountain School, an independent school in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives, reads, and enjoys the outdoors.

Reviewed by Sharon Mensing, April 2016

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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