A priest and his wife help to solve a cold case in small-town Oregon in this mystery.

Father Matthew and his wife, Maggie,are hosting their friend Father Francesco, who’s visiting their new home and parish of Biggs Junction, Oregon, at the beginning of Kelley's novel. Father Francesco, on a break from his usual work writing encyclicals for the Vatican, decides to go for a walk, exploring the rocks under a nearby bridge spanning the Columbia River, which forms the border between Oregon and Washington. But what starts as a casual outing quickly turns much darker when Father Francesco finds a human skeleton among the rocks. The three friends call the local police, who automatically think of the 5-year-old unsolved case of the Celilo girls—13-year-old twins who disappeared without a trace. If the skeleton is the remains of one of those girls, could there be a chance that the other sister is still alive? Father Matthew and Maggie describe themselves to the police as “pretty good” amateur sleuths and are soon receiving sage advice from a local officer and helping out with the case. Father Matthew and Maggie come to know Biggs Junction and its people in ways they never expected. Over many chapters, Kelley develops the mystery quite slowly and methodically as the investigation gradually broadens to include possible police corruption, inequities at the local Native Americanreservation, and the intricacies of the dark world of human trafficking. Overall, the author follows a fairly standard template for amateur-detective crime novels, but she has a winning pair in her two lead characters, whose straightforward compassion and humanity stand in refreshing contrast to the book’s darker elements. The deliberate pacing sometimes results in some stodgy sections, but the author does effectively convey the feeling of long-buried lurking evil, and some readers will be reminded of the work of bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman.

A colorful and proficient missing child mystery.

A journalist investigates a decades-old accusation in this novel.

“Great-aunt Milly shot a priest” begins Brunjes’ (Write Around Whidbey, 2016) tale, and Maggie Callahan, who has heard this family remark all her life, is determined to see if there is any truth to it. Milly Miller was among many who were forced from their land and livelihood when the Grand Coulee Dam was built in the 1930s in Washington state. Off goes Maggie, a journalist, to search the parish records in Grand Coulee and then the diocesan records in Spokane. Bishop Davis starts stonewalling her, but she finds an ally in Father Matthew Brannigan, the young pastor of St. Francis parish in Grand Coulee. Father Matthew in turn has a friend in old Father Francesco in Spokane. They begin digging and start playing almost a cat-and-mouse game with Bishop Davis. Clearly the bishop is hiding something; then there is that secret archive storeroom—quite Gothic, really. In the midst of this, Maggie is called to report on a forest fire west of Grand Coulee. She does herself proud (she is search-and-rescue and EMT trained), saving a lost 6-year-old and a wayward horse. There is also much discussion with Father Matthew and Father Francesco about priestly celibacy (yes, readers can see where this is going). Finally she and Father Matthew track down an old, frail priest who was involved not with Milly but with her sister Evangeline, Maggie’s grandmother. Brunjes spins her story effectively; the chapters are short and keep things moving. But the portrayal of Bishop Davis is a bit much. He never simply “says.” Instead, he hisses, thunders, growls, sputters, and roars. He does have a lot to lose, so the near caricature is understandable. Nevertheless, the secret that drives the narrative is deftly handled. The author milks the reveal for all its worth, and this reader took breaks between later chapters to savor the suspense. Tales about the Roman Catholic Church—its traditions, its enigmas, its moral stances, and the lives of its clergy—have always fascinated readers, and Brunjes makes a lively contribution to this category.

A diverting and intriguing family mystery involving a priest.

Philosophical, narrative free verse on life in the desert.

Nominally a book of nouns—the volume’s three division headings are People, Places and Things—Kelley’s poetry is really about present participles. Life in the desert is one of constant motion: “raising children / sweeping floors / milking cows / living lives of seeming desolation”; watching and wishing; and, all too often, of “leaving the land” and “losing it all.” Kelley’s work emphasizes that relentless struggle is as much a part of the desert as wind and sand, describing the setting as a “barren land” where “men die for water” because “sometimes it rains / sometimes flowers bloom / sometimes little tufts of grass / reach skyward. // But mostly it mocks / the dry cracked earth / and steams its way / back into the sky.” An all-encompassing context, the desert never functions as mere backdrop; rather, it infiltrates all, sometimes quite literally, as when the “winds blow / off the Rockies / leaving dirt on the floor, / in the bed, / on the old flowered sofa, / settling softly on the dishes.” Nor are the human inhabitants unaffected. Under the unfiltered glare, men live harsh lives marked by violent ritual, while women labor quietly and unceasingly. Kelley’s portrayals are hardly one-dimensional, however. Her poems capture a complicated, beautiful interplay of human and natural forces. Each of her subjects, no matter how unforgiving the circumstances, “grows into a desert bloom, fragile, beautiful, human.” With such an emphasis on finding meaning in daily activity, it’s appropriate that her mostly unembellished poetry tends toward narrative, marked by short, free-verse lines with common metrical patterns. Visual imagery complements the author’s atmospheric photography. Though occasionally clichéd—an old cowboy’s face is “etched in leather” and wild mustangs sport “flowing manes”—Kelley’s unique explorations into the intersections of ecology and identity make her well worth the read.

Patient, honest investigations of the places where external environment and personal identity clash and reshape one another.