As an owner of a "red dog" myself, I was naturally attracted to the title. As a teacher I decided to read it to my class. Five years later I'm still reading it to my class. What a winner! The kids beg for more at the end of each chapter. But best of all, the book teaches heartwarming lessons about family love and responsibility. The messages the book sends are ones all kids can relate to and are touched by. Share it with a kid.

Red Dog is a settlers point of view of how it was like to settle in the wild west. I liked this book because it grabs your attention in the first chapter and you can't stop reading. It is also very interesting because you never what is going to happen in the next paragraph. I think it should deserve a 5 star rating, it is also one of the best books I ever read.

Red Dog was the best book I ever read. It was a simply must read book. Once I picked up I could not put it down. It was so good because it had lots of action. Another reason why it was so good is it had a good ending. Once I picked it up I could not put it down. Now it would be good if he makes a sequel.

I loved The Last True Cowboy, it was a touching story of family devotion and love and a committment to saving something that is so much a part of our history. The true working ranch that a family desperately wants to save, Julia and KC are meant to be together and their dreams were so much the same. What a gentle man KC was and he would do anything to help someone out and to finally have something he called his own. Julia was afraid to put all of her faith in KC but with the love of her Grandma, memories of Ross's dreams, a city life she was not sure she wanted and a renewed relationship with a sister , how could she lose? Kathleen certainly touched my heart as I have always loved horses and I always love a happy ending. I hated to see this book end because the characters were so real. A true winner and I hope everyone takes the time to sit down and read this one. Keep up the great work, Kathleen.!!!!!!

Having just read a poor novel involving horses, I had very low expectations for "The Last True Cowboy" (cheesy title and all). I was quite surprised. I got hooked from the very first page, and one of the things that impressed me the most was the language -- this book is extremely well written, and a pleasure to read. I wanted to read it as slowly as possible to savor it, yet couldn't wait to see what was happening next. The story is very well paced, and the women figures are very well developed. They are strong characters, yet flawed -- as human as you can get. Even though you might not agree with their actions, you can see where they're coming from. The family dynamic is very believable, and the romance is not bad either. All in all I thought it was a very "grown up" story. Not your average paperback novel.

To pigeonhole the trials of Julia Weslin and the relationship that grows between her and K. C. Houston as a typical romance novel certainly doesn't due this book justice. Satisfying at just about every level, I couldn't put it down. Ms. Eagle did an especially good job of pacing the relationship between the two main characters with the same patience K. C. used on his horses. The result was a more realistic book in many ways than "The Horse Whisperer". If you loved Tom Booker, you'll enjoy the way Ms. Eagle gave her hero the same gift with horses, but used her creativity to make K. C. Houston equally interesting yet fascinatingly unique in his own way. The plot, the minor characters, and of course, the horses give this tale equal parts of color, depth and humor with enough emotional twists to keep just about any reader happy.

I've enjoyed all Ms. Eagle's books, but without a doubt, this is my favorite.

Teresa Jordan's Riding the White Horse Home is appropriately subtitled A western Family Album. Her book explicitly describes life on her family's cattle ranch and her experiences growing up in Iron Mountain Wyoming. Through her book and family's experiences, I was able to understand and know my own ancestors better. I have been on Wyoming cattle ranches but no experience I have had at the family reunions on dad's cousin's ranch in Evanston compares to the stories Teresa Jordan tells. My father was born and lived in Wyoming until moved to Midvale Utah as a teenager. Riding the White Horse Home has special meaning for me because it helped me visualize and understand what it is that my father has been telling me about the hard work done on a ranch in Wyoming. I now understand the work my ancestors did. My great grandparents were ranchers in Wyoming. I have relatives that still call the cattle ranches of Wyoming home. These relatives raise cattle on land that has been in my family for generations just as Teresa Jordan lived on the land her great grandfather originally owned. The book was as entertaining as it was informative. The life of a rancher is revealed and understood as Jordan tells her behind the scenes story of this dying American subculture. Ranching is for people who love being outside and caring for animals. Satisfaction is what drives a ranchers life, ranchers don't get rich quick but they do love their work. The book is the memories and experiences of the author and her life growing up as a cattle rancher's daughter in Wyoming. It begins with her earliest memories of ranch life, to her wedding, which was held in the community house in town. She tells about the shameful feelings she had of the ranchers life when she moved into town to begin elementary school. As well as the pride she felt recalling the lives and accomplishments of her grandparents and especially her mother the ranchers wife. Jordan dedicates each chapter to telling the story of a different relative or other significant person in her life and the influences they had. She pays a special tribute to her great-grandmother Nana in the opening lines of the book and recalls the lessons she learned from her. She walked with young Teresa picking up Indian relics and teaching her how to look for them. Jordan's book in many ways is the story of my life and your life. There is nothing extraordinary about her story, just that it is hers, everyone has something to say, the difference is that Teresa tells her story better then most. She successfully intertwines the lives of the people with the land surrounding them and what the sum of these influences has done to her. She is unique in her honesty and clarity. She tells her family's story of survival and day to day life. For me the story was real. It is the history of a dying people and the cowboy culture. The death of Teresa Jordan's mother caused great sorrow to enter her life and sent her in to a long period of mourning and soul searching. Teresa was away at college when she died, her death triggered a sort of return to her old way of life. She left school for a period of time in which she worked on the ranch she grew up on. In her youth, her experiences with the ranch were observational. Often times she became part of the stories she had heard, but hearing them so many times they became her own. As an adult, she returned to live the experiences she heard so much about. She returned to work on a friend's ranch during calving season, because that is when the real work is done. This was to be therapy for her broken heart and a way to prove to herself that she could do it. Her mother played an integral part of her life, it was a part that she did not fully recognize until it was missing. She grew closer to the father she loved as they helped each other through the pain of death and healing process. This is the white horse home she rode home. She went home to land she loved and is now telling its story.

Riding the White Horse Home is appropriately subtitled "A Western Family Album." In it, Teresa Jordan explores her family's history as cattle ranchers in the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth. She compares the life she has lived to the land from which she originated through anecdotal snippets of her ancestors' lives, searching out the "unconformities" in her history and linking herself to her family's past. Jordan grew up surrounded by generations of family living together on a ranch in Wyoming. She begins the book by describing her experiences walking with her great- grandmother on the rugged land, awestruck by her almost magical ability to find arrowheads and crinoids: "It's was a matter of looking, she said, of learning to see." By writing the history of her forebears, Jordan looks into her own life, learning to see who she is. She speaks of a troubled time when she was sorely in need of reviewing her life, "It was then, I suppose, that I first started trying to excavate the unconformities of my life that connect my heritage with who I am now, that I began to learn how to see." Her great-grandfather J.L. came to the land from the eastern Untied States to carve out a place for his family in the temperamental Western soil. From him sprang a procession of proud cattle-ranchers whose indomitable spirit helped them break the land like a stubborn colt is broken for riding. Jordan describes the curious, continuous war between the necessity for self-sufficiency in such an isolated setting and the people's need for community. Early in her life she strove for the same independence her grandfather did: "'I kill my own snakes,' Sunny was wont to say, 'and bury my own dead.'" So, too, she describes the other men of her family: "I believe it comes directly from the primitivist urge that glorifies man alone and makes him believe he should be able to succeed entirely by himself." Jordan boarded with relatives in the city when she was young, and there was introduced to the urban prejudice against being from a rural community. She struggled with this for years, trying to become her own individual, distinct from the provincial taint of her upbringing and yet at the same time like her mother, who "had chosen to be fully herself. Early on, she had decided not to make sacrifices she couldn't make willingly; from that authentic core she was able to marry and mother free of martyrdom and guilt." Midway through her college career her mother passed away, and with that extra support gone, she writes, "Now I have to confront how scared I am to go on alone." She took a semester off college and worked on her senior project studying the history of the American West and found the sense of community and belonging that she had been searching for, right back where she had started: "My mother was dead and the ranch was for sale, but in the study of the American West, I had found a way to come home." Later in life she returned to the wilds of her home for her wedding, and the everyone in the entire area lent a hand to make the event possible, from digging the barbecue pit to hanging the decorations. She comments, "For a hundred years, the community worked because its people had been tied by land and labor and shared destiny. . . . I left Iron Mountain half by choice and half by necessity. I returned because I needed healing." She found the healing that she needed in the land that she loved. That sense of welcome hominess colors all of Jordan's writings about her family. They seem as familiar as the uncle at one's family reunion who puts whoopee cushions on Grandma's chair or the cousin who hides in the corner reading a book. Her ancestors have the same commonalities and quirks that everyone does. Her writing gives the West an enchanting and realistic immediacy, like her description of the calving season: "We come in each evening splattered with mud and milk and manure, stained with blood and amniotic fluid, stinking of afterbirth. It's hard to convey the sheer satisfaction of it all." She holds back nothing from her past, recording even her prayers for a broken bone so that she could prove her strength and immortality like the rest of her family. Riding the White Horse Home is a charming and thoughtful piece of writing: a bouncy pickup ride through the years of a young woman's life in rural Wyoming.

Reading Teresa Jordan's novel Riding the White Horse Home inevitably inspires a sense of regret and loss. Throughout her portrayal of the rugged untamed wilds of Iron Mountain Wyoming and its people, she paints a vivid picture of a culture and a way of life that has all but died out. Using her own personal experiences with her friends and family, she shows the reader what ranch life was like. Her detail and imagery is superb as she takes her acquaintances one by one, chapter by chapter, and tells us their story. We learn of Sunny the grandfather who took pride in his way of life, of her mother who loves her yet is hard to understand, of her friend Kelley and how their kind are not socially accepted today, her small local wedding, childhood experiences, and more. She shows us the stark differences between ranch culture and the culture of progress. We see the unspoken rules and laws of her people and their stoicism. We come to admire their discipline and stubbornness, their ethic and devotion. And we feel the same sense of loss that Teresa must have felt as this way of life slowly drifted away. For me, it was this central message of the book that was most touching. As someone who grew up in and frequently visits Idaho, I can at least partly relate to her sadness at the change. Like her, I feel an odd sense of pride whenever anyone speaks with disdain of the old fashioned methods of my state. I enthusiastically tell all my friends the Idaho state motto; "Idaho IS, what America WAS." This is the way that Jordan displays the ranch life. She shows an honor and pride that has since been lost to the world. Her people respected hard work over hard cash, and took satisfaction from their endless labor. Despite crop failures, drought, loss of livestock, and tiring years with no seeming gain, they trudge on, unbending. My own father is much like this, taking a job that pays much less then his previous one because it gives him more satisfaction. The power of her story comes through in its reality--we are made to see through her eyes, and with this new perspective come to love the land and people as she does. We mourn with her the loss of tradition and see the beauty in the harsh terrain of Wyoming. Although it is not written chronologically, the reader can easily see the transition from family owned ranches to modern technology. Each chapter is devoted to one of her family or friends and we learn of them in detail. Jordan expertly takes us into her life and experiences. We see her fierce love for her family and the kind of relationships that they have together. At college when her mother dies, she decides to come home and immerse herself in ranch life as she remembers their connections. She talks of how much she learned from her great grandmother, and of how much she didn't see. The reader learns the trials of ranch life--calving in all its messy glory, getting mauled by bulls, fighting against the land. Her story becomes to the reader representative of the lives of all ranchers, and we come to feel a connection of our own with this unique people. There is sadness at her shame when she goes to school as a child--her people are not accepted there. Her style is frank and open, and her honesty makes her words that much clearer. She tells it like it was. For those who love to farm and for those who are content in their cozy heated homes, this is a wonderful book. It inspires the reader to change his ideals--we come to value work and stoicism like a true rancher. It makes us appreciate our loved ones more, and we realize just how much we take for granted. Teresa Jordan has taken her life and set it out before us, and we should not pass up the opportunity to learn from it.

Thunderhead is definately a must read! Ken's favorite horse Flicka gives birth to a white colt, it's a throwback, the only white horse on the ranch. And, on top of that, it looks like an ugly goblin and "scrabbles" instead of runs, when Ken wanted it ever so badly to be a champion racehorse. After a long time the horse grows into a beautiful, muscular horse and earns the name Thunderhead. Now the only problem is, his EXTREMELY bad temper and wild spirit. Throughout this book, Ken tries to gain the horses trust, and trains it to become a racehorse. And, you'll have to read the rest of the book to find out what happens. I recommend this book to all readers above 4th or 5th grade!

I loved THUNDERHEAD. It is powerful and moving,and Ken matured a lot! Thunderhead is such a wild, hideous colt in the beginning, but he turns into a handsome colt--and grows wilder. Ken fears he won't be a racer. Thunderhead is always escaping to dominate a herd of wild mares. He fights with the legendary Albino and becomes strong and fierce. The ending is..a surprise.

This is a great book and I would recomend it for many people.
Thunderheads mother was Flika, Ken Mclaughtins first filly. Thunderhead was the first white horse born on the Goose Bar Ranch in Wyoming. Thunderhead jumps fences and climbes mountains. He finds a passage way to a valley that Ken later names Valley of the Eagles. This leads to an old albino stailion, Thunderhead gets a few nips and hoof marks before he is able to get out of the valley and return to the ranch. Thunderhead adventually goes back to the valley and kills the albino staillion. He adeopts the mares that the albino had once cared for. Thunderhead retutns home and is caught by Kens dad Captain Mclaughtin. Thunderhead is sceduled to be in a race because he is very fast and powerful. Thunderhead starts the race but looses his themper and bucks his rider off, the jumps a fence. The Goose Bar Ranch already has a stallion, Banner. Ken, knowing he can't keep his horse locks, Thunderhead in the Valley of the Eagles. Anyone who likes horses and is in middle school or above should read this book.

I have always thought a mountain climbing killing might be the perfect murder. Who is say how the "accident" occurred? Sometimes the body is never found. A misstep, a quirk of the weather, a piece of rotten rock---all or singly could happen in an instant and be given as the likely cause of death.

"The Edge of Justice," a debut novel, takes that premise and gives it quite a shake. Protagonist Anton Burns, Special Investigator for the State of Wyoming and climbing enthusiast, is sent to Laramie to investigate the accidental death of a girl who fell to her death from a ledge in the mighty Vedauwoo mountains. Anton is carrying a heavy load of baggage: he is under investigation for shooting and killing three men in a police raid, his beloved elder brother is in jail for manslaughter, and he has been exiled to the Cody office far from the action in Cheyenne. When he arrives in Laramie, the biggest trial in the history of the state is in progress, trying two lowlife brothers for the brutal rape/murder of a young girl. Anton and his faithful bear of a dog, Oso, after an idyllic afternoon rock climbing investigate the site of the climbing death. He quickly ascertains that the "accident" was murder. While investigating, he realizes a cover-up is in place and it is very likely the brothers on trial are innocent.

This is a fast paced novel that keeps our interest engaged. Mr. MacKinzie is obviously an expert climber and does well in describing the almost lyrical joys of high altitude climbing. One might say he devotes too many pages to the technical aspects of climbing, but I stayed involved all the way. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, either very good or very bad with no ambiguity. Also there are far too many subplots and needless diversions. However, the author has a good tale to tell, and he does it well. I look forward to further adventures with Anton; maybe the next time will be a little more streamlined.

I'm still not sure whether I'm more inpressed with the author or the novel!

Allegedly, this is the author's first novel. However, the enduring excitement McKinzie's story provides keeps the reader unable to close the book. Clinton McKinzie has a style most authors are lucky to perfect over a life-time.

I eagerly await the already planned prequel. McKinzie's career will be watched with great interest.

EDGE OF JUSTICE was slow getting started for me but once it picked up my interest, I was hooked. Anton Burns is a breath of fresh air. He's not a supercop, but a mountain climber/peace officer in exhile. I can't wait to read the prequel to find out why he is in exhile. I recommend this book, highly. It was more realistic in that Burns went through ALOT of trials and tribulations and I loved that he wasn't some supercop who could control each and every situation he was in. Often, the injustices that occured were very fustrating to read but realistic regardless. I think this book would appeal to those who are tired of the same ole thing. Characterizations were strong and memorable. Look forward to his next book.

Keishon

This may be a great book for summer Yellowstone adventurers, but there is nothing mentioned about the beauty of Yellowstone during the winter. So, basically it was worthless and a waste of $$. We just got back from a winter snowmobiling tour, and it was amazing. I would suggest the Moon Handbooks - Yellowstone - Grand Teton National Parks...

Lots of good information in this book really helped prepare us for our trip to Yellowstone. Hike information was great and even pointed out when certain trails opened. This was very helpful in planning since we were traveling in May before many trails were open.

I purchased this book and several others for my trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone. This book was very informative on lodging, trails, sightseeing and travel. This guide was a time saver as well giving me ideas of the trails and difficulty and estimated time. Many things to do and lots of recommendations for children but its so much more. Definately a keeper and will use next time im planning a vacation to the area. Oh by the way, i do recommend a trip to the Tetons and Yellowstone. The tetons were breathtaking and definately do the trip accross Jenny Lake. Yellowstone, WOW the gysers, wildlife, fishing it was terrific. Have Fun. Jeff

The book "The Virginian" being a western book, I was initially skeptical of it being any better then shoot em up giddyup types of books. However I was quickly taken aback by the fact that they never fully identified the background of the Virginian.
Throughout the entire book he remains a mystery, his whole life a mystique aside from what everyone knew which was he came from the eastern part of the country. With a persona that screams Mad Max "The Road Warrior" he is a modest person who goes for the gusto in his ventures during the book. Working in Wyoming his boss Judge Henry, is not very strong as far as standing up for himself is concerned. When a rival rancher hires some bandits to rob a couple of horses from Henry's ranch, it's the Virginian to the rescue. Eventually the book which includes many other swashbuckling adventures, waters down to a duel between the leader of the Bandits and the Virginian. He even has time for a lovelife in the craziness of the west when he hooks up with a school teacher by the name of Molly Stark. The wedding does not go quite as planned though and I suggest you read the novel to eventually find out what happens. A terific story that has been made into two motion pictures, the plot in Owen Wisters story has more twists then a hostess truckload of strudel. For the person that liked the "Lonesome Dove" mini series this book is for you.

This is the classic story by Wister (1860-1938) of the ranch foreman, known only as the Virginian, his courtship of Molly Starkwood, the "schoolmarm" from Vermont, and his conflicts with Trampas. In 1977, the Western Writers of America voted this novel as the top western novel of all time. It probably started the whole genre (even if one counts the pulp fiction popular in the late 19th century). Historians have always pointed out that there never really was a "Code of the West." This was just something thought up by writers, journalists, and film makers. The West was made up of both good and bad men, just as today. But, in my opinion, this book challenges that concept. Wister based his characters on real people he interacted with in the West a few years earlier. There really were men like the Virginian. There really were people who, unknowingly, followed a Code (just as there are today).

I was in the used book store and I saw this book. The Virginian. "Hm," I thought. "I used to watch that show on television when I was a kid." By Owen Wister. "So, it's a book!" And I though that was pretty cute. Oh, and I liked the cover. The edition that I bought was in the Pulp Fiction section of the book store, that real old book smellin', yellowing pages, origional cover price anywhere between 15 and 99 cents section. So I bought it, read a couple of pages expecting to find out that it was the cheesest thing I'd picked up in a hundred years. And before I even knew what was happening The Virginian, black curly hair in desperate need of a cut, quick draw, lonesome maverick, the new teacher for the one room schoolhouse-yes, even the one room schoolhouse!-all were in my purse, going with me everywhere...Never mind that it's a western, get over yourselves and read this book! It's so much fun. Mr. Wister gives a good story, well told.

I read Roy Parvin's collection of stories (THE LONELIEST ROAD IN AMERICA) a couple of years ago and loved them. They're big-hearted, strange and original, stories where landscape attains the status of character. I recommend them as much as any book within the last ten years. Now, with IN THE SNOW FOREST, Parvin makes even bigger, stranger and more original tracks. The three novellas in this book do what the stories do and beyond, the landscape as character, turns of phrase so lovely and deft it almost hurts; these novellas, though, elevate their sad protagonists to almost-mythhic status. I say "sad" and mean it. These are not comic stories (though they are, at times, very, very funny) but stories about people approaching that last ridge, waiting to see what lies beyond. And I say "almost-mythic," by which I mean Parvin doesn't settle for the easy ride of magic realism or even exaggeration, but lets the landscape shape his people, lets snow and wind and heartbreak and time tear at them and push them along on bumpy rides. And what waits at the end of each novella isn't AND THEN HE BECAME A LOCAL LEGEND. No, what waits at the end is just the end of a life, a simple human life. But with the subtle grace only a writer of the highest skill and most generous heart can find. That's the word for these stories: Graceful. As in both full of grace and grace of language.

My recommendation? Buy Parvin's stories and marvel at them. And then buy this collection of novellas and get ready to be moved right over the last ridge.

These novellas haven't left me alone... The characters are intense and fascinating, the scenery is almost eerily vivid (you can actually feel the cold, I think) and the prose is just beautiful. These are powerful stories about humanity and redemption, and they deserve to be read again and again.

"In the Snow Forest" is truly great stuff - it's been a while since a book has left such an impression on me. Roy Parvin is a gift to fiction readers!

Who knows how a fellow from Georgia found this wonderful book of the American West. . . . A lucky discovery, a book that speaks to anyone with a heart, a mind, a soul, regardless of home. The distinction that separates the story from the novella from the full-on novel seems irrelevant here. The three pieces that make up the book are as rich and deep as novels, as sharp and efficient as stories, and taken together, beautifully establish a fascinating vision of love, loss and a world that, like a flame, shimmers as it fades away. I've read it twice now-once, fast and furious, fighting alongside the vivid characters, and a second time, to appreciate the wise and witty words, and the wisdom of Parvin's ideas. And I'll read it again for Gibbs, "the big man who looked like trouble, even with his glasses," and for Darby and Harper, the doomed lovers who "marvel over the "intricate piecework of love," and for Lindsay, "old enough for things to have happened." The inside back jacket tells us that Parvin is at work on a novel. This reader can't wait.

"Why is it that every time we find dead bodies strewn about you always seem to be standing in the middle of them!?" Once again Joe Pickett, the unsophisticated, straight-as-an-arrow game warden, will make sure that the worthless and possible corrupt sheriff overlooks nothing in this latest murder investigation. Initially it appears that a famous ecoterrorist has been killed in Saddlestring, Wyoming. As other famous environmentalists are picked off, rumors start that Stewie Woods has escaped death. Plus, he is a very old friend of Joe's wife. Joe must put aside his jealousy to help Stewie escape from a conspiracy of anti-environmentalists based right in his home town.

Like his first novel, Open Season, C.J. Box centers his story on a controversial issue in the West: this time on eco-terroristism. Box does a good job of presenting the good and bad sides of a difficult issue and weaving it nicely into the plot. Box also adds in the discovery of an old Indian site and the famous story of an 1880's hired hit man.

Box's writing is still enjoyable, western-edged prose. Joe Pickett remains one of the most interesting good guy characters in the genre (and yes, he gets his gun taken away from him again). Box has a lot of intriguing plot lines. However, these aren't developed to any depth; they are simply dropped into the story at the most convenient time. Box has the makings of a great book but, while it is an enjoyable read, it lacks the complexity and sophistication that made Open Season so good.

Starting with probably the most intriguing first paragraph of any novel I have ever read, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of conspiracy to kill environmental advocates/ecoterrorists that is set in the beautiful Wyoming mountains. The hero of this tale is game warden Joe Pickett, an ordinary guy who takes his job very seriously. Pickett gets called to the scene of an explosion in a cow herd that kills 10 cows and an unknown number of people. In between his work to enforce fishing and hunting licenses or count Elk calves, Pickett gets involved in investigating the apparent murder of ecoterrorist Stewie Woods who we find out was a teenage lover of Pickett's "babe" wife Marybeth. As the story evolves we track the progress of assassins who are working their way down a hit list of environmental activitists, Congressmen, lawyers etc. As part of their agenda, the killers dispose of their victims in an ironic way--often having the animals or setting that are being protected resulting in the deaths of the victims. Particularly gruesome was a situation involving bacon and some wild animals....

I enjoyed author C.J. Box's writing style including his droll humor and his ability to turn ordinary, everyday people into very interesting and likable characters. There was nothing particularly special about Joe Pickett: his work seemed routine, he had several bad and possibly fatal blunders and his straight-arrow personality and dogged pursuit of out of season hunters irritated some politicos in the state. But his devotion to his job and family and his integrity endears him to the reader.

Box, a former ranch hand and fishing guide, is a Wyoming native and does a great job of describing the rugged Western scenery as well as the pioneer spirit of the people. I look forward to more in this series.

C. J. Box has more than lived up to his high promise of his debut novel "Open Season," This time out, the writing is more polished, graceful and the plotting is more tightly controlled. I also hereby award the author "The Best First Line Prize of 2002" I was hooked after this: "On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy."
Hard to resist, right?

Joe Pickett is called in as game warden for a sighted "livestock slaughter." At the time, no one knew any humans were involved. This is not the story of golden haired environmentalists vs. evil developers. There is good, bad and sometimes just plain silly on both sides. But Joe gradually becomes aware that some seemingly unconnected deaths of major environmentalists have links with his cow explosion. The action is fast, the violence sudden and graphic and has a gratifying climax. I felt guilty about feeling satisfied, but I just couldn't help it.

The characterizations are extremely sharp. Though Joe has a very low opinion of his abilities, you have to listen how other people judge and estimate him to get a balanced idea of his true worth. Someone compared him to a Jimmy Stewart character and I think the comparison is apt. His wife Marybeth (the consensus is she's a "babe") is anything but a dim presence. She is Joe's other self, and sometimes the wiser one. The author handles the Wyoming scenery and ambiance like a master. You feel as if he has stepped on every foot of ground.

An excellent read, and I await my next meeting with Joe Pickett with pleasure.

I thorougly enjoyed reading WINTERKILL. Mr. Box is a brillant writer and brought me into his world in an exciting, interesting and touching way.

The excitement showed me the challenges that Joe was going through being a part of the forest service. Mr. Box made me aware of his love of the land. His descriptive way of expressing its beauty was very interesting and made me want to see Wyoming like he does. Joe's family which consisted of Marybeth and the girls reached out to my heart as I watch this tale unfold. I immediately became a part of them; laughing and crying when needed.

I offer this to you all and say, if you want a book that will hold your interest and weave a tale of mystery and beauty, I suggest that you read WINTERKILL. Then immediately go out (as I did) and buy and read his other two books. They were amazing.

I look forward to the next Joe Pickett novel. Thank you Mr. Box, a job well done.

I have loved each of the Joe Pickett novels to date, and with Winterkill C.J. Box opens with a bang and then floors it. Joe Pickett and his family are taken to the limit in frightening and completely believable ways, and this novel shows how scary it can be to be up against a force of practically pure evil, even if she's wearing a green Forest Service skirt. It is easy to miss the humanity and beauty of the novel because of the tension and pace, but I know it's there if I want to go back. In his third outing, Joe seems angrier, and more determined than ever before. This time, he gets some help from a charismatic loner named Nate Romanowski whom, I hope, we'll see again. This is one the best new series in crime fiction, and the suspense is unbearable -- as is the sad, if realistic, sense of inevitability at the end. Powerful. I eagerly await the next Joe Pickett novel.

C.J. Box's third Joe Pickett novel, "Winterkill" is simply magnificent.

Joe, a Wyoming game warden is good at his job, a loyal family man, a good guy with flaws and doubts who does not suffer incompetents.

The murder of a Forest Service supervisor brings in federal bureaucrats led by the spiteful, psychotic and underhanded Melinda Strickland.

She immediately and incorrectly railroads Nate Romanowski, a local loner with a mysterious past.

When the government hating survivalists, the Sovereign Citizens camp on nearby federal land, Strickland recognizes a high profile opportunity. She is willing to orchestrate a bloody conflict to further her career.

Pickett understands the potential disaster, and with Nate attempts to uncover the true murderer before the showdown commences.

In the end, Joe must bend the law to insure justice---an act that deepens the character.

Filled with bright characters, the severe beauty of a Wyoming winter and incredible suspense, "Winterkill" is a present-day take on the old fashioned western.

Outstanding!