Product Description

Just days after marrying Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon moves to Colorado to assume her new post as district ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park. When two of three children who'd gone missing from a religious retreat reappear, Anna's investigation brings her face-to-face with a paranoid sect--and with a villain so evil, he'll make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56603 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.com Review
Ranger Anna Pigeon, Nevada Barr's series heroine (High Country, Flashback), meets her match in this engrossing new thriller set in Rocky Mountain National Park. Heath Jarrod is a climber now confined to a wheelchair after an accident that left her crippled, angry and depressed: "For a few months after the fall, she'd played Christopher Reeve, pretending to be as optimistic, as cheerful, but she was a lousy actor and ... she'd rung down the curtain. The first of many curtains." But there's a second act in her future that begins when two terrified, half-naked little girls stumble out of the woods and into Heath's "handicamp"--they've been missing for weeks, but are too traumatized to tell Heath and then Anna where they've been, or what happened to the third girl who disappeared with them. Beth, the younger, wins Heath's heart; with Anna, she pursues an investigation that leads to a bizarre, quasi-religious cult that's set up its headquarters just outside the park's boundaries, and the youth group leader who'd taken the girls into the wilderness and returned without them. Is Robert Proffit the gentle, spiritual man Anna's seasonal law enforcement agent Rita Perry thinks he is, or a twisted rapist and probable killer whose prayers for the innocent girls in his charge mask his evil nature?

The mysteries keep piling on, as one gruesome discovery leads to another, and Heath begins to realize that even though she's lost the use of her legs, the same tenacity that made her one of the world's leading mountaineers has even more rewarding summits to achieve. Barr builds the suspense skillfully and drives the narrative to a bloody, violent, and unexpected conclusion in one of her best mysteries to date. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
In Barr's taut 13th thriller to feature Anna Pigeon (after 2004's High Country), the 50-ish National Park Service ranger leaves her new husband, Paul, back in Mississippi, to assume a new post in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, where she encounters a serial killer and a strong, determined woman, Heath Jarrod, much like herself. Heath, a former ice climber now confined to a wheelchair after a near-fatal fall, feels depressed, isolated and helpless. She's camping in the national park with her physician, who's also her aunt, when a pair of battered young girls, two of three missing from a nearby religious retreat, appear at the campsite. Heath and Anna at first dislike one another, but join forces to break the silence enforced by the retreat's domineering head and discover why the youngsters vanished, who took them, where they were and what happened to the third girl. Barr skillfully weaves contemporary issues of parental responsibility, religious and political separatism, and sexual abuse into her harrowing story. She carefully sets the scene in the first part of the book, which builds to a spectacular climax that pits Anna against evil incarnate. Noted for her precise plotting and atmospheric descriptions of nature, Barr again proves her skill in putting believable characters in peril against a backdrop of breathtaking scenery.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Ranger Anna Pigeon may be happily married, but she is not willing to pass up an opportunity to advance her career. Rocky Mountain National Park is her new destination, and no sooner does she set foot in the park than she finds herself smack in the middle of a bizarre mystery: two young teen girls who have been missing for weeks reappear. They refuse to talk about their ordeal, and they claim to know nothing about the third girl who vanished with them. Emotionally wrecked Heath Jarrod, who recently lost the use of her legs in a climbing accident, seems to be the only person able to connect with the children, especially the youngest, Beth. As Anna investigates, Heath keeps an informal eye on the kids and in so doing finds new purpose in her life. The villain here is more sadistic than many of the scoundrels Pigeon encountered in previous novels, as vividly demonstrated in the final chapters, but Barr nicely balances the brutality with a thoughtful portrayal of Heath's struggle to rethink herself and Anna's own indomitable spirit and bravery. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

This episode is far from being "cozy"
Park ranger Anna Pigeon has taken an assignment in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, unfortunately many states away from her new husband Paul back in Mississippi. This is Anna Pigeon's darkest encounter yet, with the danger buried not in Mother Nature, but in the embodiment of some truly sinister human beings. Her near partner-against-crime is an unlikely woman in a wheelchair. Heath Jarrod is a former rock climber who is now paralyzed after falling from a cliff. The two are both such strong women that they don't immediately hit it off. But both are making every effort to right the numerous wrongs in the situations they find themselves in. The issues here are disturbing but far too real: kidnapping, child abuse, religious cults, serial killings. Serious stuff.

Anna realizes who the perpetrator is with one third of the book to go. She spends the rest of that time in an attempt not to catch the person, but making every effort to get away and get safe. And it's a long struggle in the remote wilds of Rocky Mountain National Park.

I was captivated by the turn of events and the characters and read the last half of the book with both curiosity and dread. I like to be mystified, but I don't like to be scared. I don't watch horror movies and I don't usually read dark and sinister stuff. That being said, I think HARD TRUTH may be the last Anna Pigeon book for me. I've read each book in the series and have enjoyed them overall, especially as they are set in such wonderful surroundings. But the darkness and the violence is getting too much for naive, little me. I wish Ms. Barr and Anna well, and maybe our paths will cross again someday.

HARD TRUTH is an intriguing, suspenseful, well-crafted story that could all too easily be true. Be afraid, be very afraid!

Very uncomfortable and unnerving
I love Nevada Barr novels. Having said that I found this one very difficult to get through. I am a middle school science teacher during the school year and a National Park law enforcement ranger in the summer. I have worked in two of the parks Ms. Barr has written about. I love Ms. Barrs writing style and the novels have done a great job in educating or introducing people to National Parks and the National Park scene. Although I found the location of this story beautiful, the subject was extremely dark. Normally I love getting lost in her novels for hours at a time but this time I couldn't wait to get back to reality. When brutality of the nature in this book happens to adults (even in fiction) it is bad, but when it happens to children it is horrific. If there was an educational bent to this story or some moral to be used to improve society maybe I would understand it better. I didn't see one in this book.
I'm not writing this to try to influence Nevada Barrs next novels content. I want more people to read her books. The more people caring about their national parks the better. I'm writing this because I don't want people to be turned off if this is their first book of hers they are going to read. If you haven't read any of her books I recomend starting with Track of the Cat and following the growth of Anna Pigeon through her successive stories,

Incredibily unpleasant read
I have been a huge fan of the Anna Pigeon mysteries. The hard truth about Hard Truth is skip it. It is a very unpleasant experience.

The graphic representation of child abuse and cruelty in this book still makes me ill.

What I've loved about the Anna Pigeon series is that I felt like I got a good sense of the national park where the story took place with an appreciation for the natural beauty of the area. I doubt Anna spent more than a night in Rocky Mountain National Park. Not only does she completely miss the unique character of the park but the park has no necessary link to the story. The whole thing could have taken place in urban Chicago.

I have been picking up Nevada Barr books as fast as I could find them. This book, however, was truely repulsive. I'll be much more cautious about investing a part of my life in her next book.