Dakota

December 17, 2007
Bestseller Grimes’s compelling second novel to feature the enigmatic young woman who calls herself Andi Oliver (after 1999’s Biting the Moon
) begins with Andi, who’s still unaware of her real name or her past, adrift in the Dakota badlands. After rescuing an abandoned donkey, Andi makes a temporary home for herself in the small town of Kingdom, where she soon creates a stir by standing up to some local bullies. She really begins to shake things up in the placid community, however, when she takes a job at a pig farm to try to save the cruelly treated animals bred there. After sneaking into the farm’s affiliated assembly-line slaughterhouse, Andi resolves to find a way, within the bounds of the law or not, to call to account the management of both places for violating humane animal treatment laws. While one late plot development stretches credibility, Grimes succeeds in sustaining suspense while graphically portraying the ugliness of animal abuse.

Grimes has a knack for creating engaging characters, and, not surprisingly, Andi Oliver is unique and likable, especially for his iron backbone and a deep affinity for animals. RenÄe Raudman superbly creates the perfect voice--calm and natural--to endear listeners to Andi even more. The story itself is a blatant exposÄ and indictment of the factory farm, the hog-raising industry, in this case. Raudman makes each character's voice distinctive and expertly modulates her tone and pitch to build tension and sustain suspense. She puts real feeling into the graphic descriptions of animal abuse as she effectively delivers this disturbing story. S.C.A. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine