The Signal

Starred review from March 16, 2009
The dense Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming is where Carlson (Five Skies
) sets his brooding latest, a tale of expired love and desperate measures. Mack, son of a longtime rancher, has made many missteps in life, culminating in a recent stint in jail where “he'd rusted like an old post when the weather turned.” While he's in jail, his recently ex-wife Vonnie agrees to join him one last time on their annual ritual of backpacking through the Wyoming wilderness to fish, camp and rediscover each other. Mack, though, has a hidden motive: a friend/technical genius has hired him to retrieve a valuable drone that's crash-landed in the forest. Carlson describes the couple's six days wandering the wooded terrain in delicate, measured prose, careful to miss neither the lush scenery nor the incrementally amplified tension as Mack edges closer to his prize and shady characters from the past appear. Carlson has produced a work of masterful fiction, combining the sad inevitability of a doomed relationship with sheer nail-biting suspense.

April 15, 2009
Energetic depiction of a rocky mountain romance that sputters along for an eventful decade.

Carlson (The Speed of Light, 2003, etc.) takes as his setting the formidably gorgeous terrain in and around Wyoming's Wind River Mountains, where protagonist Mack grows up on his widowed father's dude ranch, accommodating and charming tenderfoot tourists in pursuit of controlled adventure and spectacle. One such is Vonnie, a headstrong educated Easterner with a musical gift. The expanse of their relationship is slowly revealed from the vantage point of Vonnie's return to Wyoming for a tenth annual backpacking mountain trip, by which time her attraction to Mack has grown cold. Lengthy flashbacks focus mostly on Mack, a bright but wayward youngster whose stamina and stoicism endear him to the mercurial Vonnie. At 17, she wanders away from the ranch and is rescued by the taciturn but already smitten Mack. Vonnie goes back East; Mack's dad dies; and the young man begins to drift:"Without his father's expectations, he found himself without a rudder." Mack attends college and learns skills that get him work as a computer consultant for some very shady clients. Soon he's entrenched in a life of crime and exposure to lethal violence. His impulsive marriage to Vonnie quickly unravels; she's ever hopeful, but, unlike Mack, nobody's fool. There's too much repetition in otherwise superbly managed wilderness scenes, but the novel simmers with a strongly constructed impression of trouble perpetually lurking nearby, nicely captured in the local tall tale of Hiram, a lovelorn recluse and stalker. These strengths, along with the vivid figures of Vonnie and Mack, will keep most readers turning the pages.

A bit of a comedown from the bracing high of Five Skies (2007), Carlson's best novel to date, but an eye-opening trip well worth taking nevertheless.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from June 1, 2009
As in his wonderful "Five Skies", Carlson again offers readers a broken man endeavoring to heal himself through nature. Following his dad's sudden death, Mack, who comes from a long line of Wyoming ranchers, takes to muling drugs to raise fast cash to save the family homestead. Add months of constant drinking and a fling with an even more damaged woman, and Mack finds himself despondent, divorced, and jailed. Free again, he convinces ex-wife Vonnie to come on one final fishing trip high in the mountains they both love. For him, it's both an attempt to win her back and a secret, high-paying job to locate a classified government object that fell from a military plane. Vonnie simply wants closure and a last good-bye. Their plans evaporate when they encounter something more nefarious in the deep, silent, engulfing forest than anything they'd faced before. VERDICT This character-driven story unfurls slowly through dialog, exposition, and flashbacks. Simple, taut, and elegant, it's a beautifully told tale of love and redemption that all readers will appreciate.Mike Rogers, "LJX/LJ"

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2009
Mack and Vonnie depart for their annual backpacking-fishing trip in their beloved Wind River Mountains in Wyoming. But this years trip will be their last. They are now divorced. That they will reopen old wounds seems certain, but they also find their lives threatened far from any assistance. As in his finely wrought Five Skies (2007), Carlson excels in painting a stunningly beautiful portrait of a place. He shows readers in vivid passages why Mack and Vonnie love these mountains. Also, as in Five Skies, his characters dialogue is often elliptical and subject to multiple interpretations. Here we hear the words, eachfraught with backstory, of two people who know each other intimately. The old wounds are reopened as the couple sketches their history together and the causes of their divorce, leading the reader to conclude that their joy at being back in the mountains mutes their anger. Unfortunately, the dangers they face seem contrived or poorly explicated, but there is plenty to enjoy here, from the portrayal of the majestic mountains to the interplay between the lead characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)