Reservations

January 1, 2017
A Montana journalist's trip to visit her bridegroom's Arizona relatives becomes a horror story.Now that Lola Wicks, back from Afghanistan, has married Sheriff Charlie Laurendeau, the part-Blackfoot father of her 7-year-old daughter, Margaret, and settled in as a reporter on the Magpie paper, Charlie proposes a late honeymoon trip to visit his brother, Edgar, who long ago left their reservation to marry a Navajo woman. Although reluctant to go, Lola packs up the family, including three-legged border collie Bub, and they head for Arizona. Edgar and his wife, Naomi, are Dartmouth-educated lawyers; she works for the tribe and he for the coal company that's straining the reservation's resources. Also resident in their updated hogan, complete with all mod cons, are their 9-year-old daughter, Juliana, and Thomas Benally, a distant relative staying with them while studying pre-law. A bomb has just killed an unlucky tribal elder sitting next to a coal company sign that was the bomber's likely target. The tribe is divided about the coal company, which provides many well-paying jobs but demands so much water that it's draining the streams the people need for their sheep and crops. While visiting a cliff house, a climb the height-averse Lola makes with trepidation, they witness the bombing of a coal truck that kills the driver. Over Charlie's objections, Lola's reporter instincts kick in. Their relationship, already strained by the anti-white remarks of Edgar and Naomi, is further tested when Charlie volunteers to act as a bodyguard for Naomi, who's received a threatening letter. Lola herself is threatened, but it's not until Bub is dognapped that Lola, who'll do anything to protect her family, vows to figure out who's behind the bombings. Florio (Disgraced, 2016, etc.) captures the culture and poverty on reservations still suffering from greed and mismanagement in a ripped-from-the-headlines story with a shocking ending.

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Starred review from January 1, 2017

Formerly a war correspondent, now a journalist living in Montana, Lola Wicks often prefers reporting to people. In this fourth adventure (after Disgraced), Lola and her family--husband Charlie, who's a member of the Blackfeet tribe, and their daughter, Maggie--take a trip to the Arizona Navajo reservation to visit Charlie's brother and wife. It's the last place Lola expects to get caught up in a news scoop. But then a bomb goes off, killing one of the tribal elders, and signs point to ecoterrorists who are protesting a new coal mine on the reservation that is destroying the mesa, poisoning the local water supply, and driving people from their homes. And yet the mine is a key source of employment in the region, and as Lola digs--how can she ignore a story so divisive?--she discovers community tensions that run deeper than the mine. VERDICT Compelling, realistically flawed characters and a timely story line, especially in the wake of the protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline, make this one of Florio's hardest-hitting mysteries yet.

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