Gwen Florio’s brisk first novel draws you in right away, and keeps you close during the speedy 256 pages it takes her to tell her story. Her main character, Lola Wicks, is a Baltimore reporter just called home from Afghanistan. She wants to go back but her editor says he doesn’t have the budget, and what’s more, she has so much vacation time coming she better take it.
While Lola makes her own plans—liquidating her funds and stashing them all around her person (something she’s learned through long stays in Kabul)—she decides to take a brief vacation first, visiting her old reporter buddy, Mary Alice, in tiny Magpie, Montana. All is not well when she arrives. Mary Alice isn’t at the airport and after Lola waits, rents a car, and eventually finds Mary Alice’s isolated cabin, she also finds a dead Mary Alice—something that sends her screeching back down the mountain road in a panic.
The first person she sees is a rancher repairing a fence. He’s operating on “mountain time” and while they eventually make their way back up the hill to Mary Alice’s body, it takes him much longer than the jittery Lola likes. Sure enough though, not only is Mary Alice dead, but her cabin’s been trashed, and Lola finds herself the unwilling guardian of a dog named Bub and told by the sheriff not to leave town. Thanks to her years working war zones, Lola is used to defusing and figuring out tricky, volatile situations, and once she settles down and is able to think clearly, she starts wondering who killed Mary Alice and how she can prove it. That’s a pretty typical amateur set-up, but Lola has some smarts and some skills that many amateurs don’t have. She is, after all, a reporter, used to observing, listening and paying attention—all the skills needed by a good detective.
As she gets more comfortable in town, and with Bub, she moves into Mary Alice’s cabin and finds she’s also the temporary caretaker of a horse. Lola has a long list of “don’ts”: she doesn’t carry a purse, eat breakfast, cry, eat pie, or ride a horse. In fact, she’s afraid of horses.
This novel is really a sly take on the coming-of-age novel. Though Lola’s not a young girl, she’s still beginning a new life chapter with all the adapting and change that requires. One of those things is learning to ride a horse, something Florio describes in a delightfully humorous sequence.
She gets interested in local politics in the form of the first native candidate for governor, Johnny Running Wolf; she sees firsthand the kind of damage the county’s meth problem is causing; and she gets to know one of the more successful ranchers, Verle, the very same one she met on her first headlong flight down the hill from Mary Alice’s cabin.
This is an enjoyable first novel. Nothing is quite as expected—there’s a sly twist to most of the plot developments, and some very nice, crisp writing. Lola’s reporter’s background makes her memorable, her quirks make her interesting, and through her investigation of Mary Alice’s murder, Florio rounds out her character completely. Lola lives and breathes on the page, and you’ll probably be glad you met her.
