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Summer (Sam) Westin has had many jobs involving nature and wildlife. Currently, she is employed by Save the Wilderness Fund, an organization that is seeking to preserve the cougar population in Utah's Red Rock parks. Her job is to hike up to the area where they are known to live and give the giant cats some good press. Photos, anecdotes, etc. are what she is looking for. As Sam prepares to hike up to their hunting grounds, she sees a toddler seemingly lost in the campground. She hears the mother's frantic calls—“Zachary, Zackary!--and then notices a man at the end of the path beckoning to the boy. Assuming that the man is the boy's father, she pushes the tot into the brush toward him, waves and leaves. Later, Sam learns that the boy, Zack, has disappeared. A frantic search begins, but even before it has been underway for very long, whispers begin about the possibility that Zack has been taken by a cougar. Once folks start talking like this, it can not be long, Sam knows, before the officials decide to allow hunters to go in and rid the public of this menace. She holds herself responsible for putting Zack in harm's way, and she is concerned that the search will focus on her endangered animals, rather than on human culprits. While camping out, Sam hears the weird cries of Coyote Charlie, a phantom character who seems to be a part of the scenery although never really seen except from a distance. Items of Zack's clothing and pieces of his toys are found in various locations, and a number of suspects emerge, including Coyote Charlie but also a child molester who is known to have been in the park, two local teens who try to pick up ransom, and even the child's adopted father, Fred Fischer. This is an exciting story, with Sam's ability to handle herself under grueling conditions including cougar wounds, lack of food or warmth and near drowning putting her in the class of heroes usually reserved for the male sex. Readers may have to suspend disbelief as they watch Sam continue to push herself beyond what seems possible. Her survival skills are not lost on FBI agent Chase Perez, and we sense a budding romance. But the story works, it is well written, and includes interesting information about the Red Rock area in which it takes place. It is by no means a "cozy," yet there is a security in its pages. We somehow sense that no one we care deeply about will come to great harm. §Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.
Reviewed by Anne Corey, November 2011
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