Product Description

Grimes's beloved Andi Oliver returns, on the run from her past.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2128067 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-05
• Format: Large Print
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 613 pages

From Publishers Weekly
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. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“As always, Grimes writes with breathtaking grace… Dakota will leave you wanting much more…At once heartbreaking and heartwarming.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Compelling.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A good read with an interesting twist.”
—Denver Post

About the Author
Martha Grimes is the New York Times bestselling author of the Richard Jury mysteries and other acclaimed works of fiction.

Customer Reviews

Found myself Googling vegetarian recipes after I closed the book on the last chapter
One of the best parts of starting any new book is the anticipation of what comes next. Will you greet old friends to stroll through familiar haunts and join in their adventures? Will an entirely new world come to life with exciting new people in new places? When the novel is by a seasoned series author like Martha Grimes, whose strongest suit is developing memorable characters in interesting places, you can be sure of one thing: you're in for a good read.

In DAKOTA, Grimes brings back a truly remarkable young woman by the name of Andi Oliver, first created in BITING THE MOON, a stand-alone novel released in 1999. Andi comes to us as fresh as any character can possibly be. She woke up in a Santa Fe motel not knowing who or where she was, where she had been, and with no identity or clues to her past. This is the way we meet new characters in fiction all the time, relying on the author to fill in the back story. Andi is unique in that she has to make up her own identity to survive, thus creating her own back story. And what an imagination she has! She invents an entirely fictional wealthy Long Island family, which makes for amusing moments as she tries to remember non-existent siblings and past events. So our Andi is creating herself in her own fiction. Now there's a new twist!

Andi is one of many heroines Grimes has brought us outside of her well-loved Richard Jury mysteries. No setting could be further from the cozy firesides in the famous English pubs of her mystery books than the wide open plains of the American West. Fans have asked so often if she was going to write another novel about Andi that she decided the young woman with the cast iron backbone and an affinity for abused animals had more adventures to share. After surviving in the wilds of New Mexico and Idaho, Andi is on the road again, hitchhiking through the Dakota plains. She works her way northwest through waitressing jobs to sustain her minimalist lifestyle and finds herself in a remote North Dakota town whose main industry is a factory farm --- a hog containment industry where pigs are raised for area packing plants.

Andi, who has already killed a man in Idaho in self-defense, seems to be a magnet for trouble, and she stirs up the suspicions of the local townspeople by rescuing an abandoned donkey belonging to a local rancher and scuffling with his bullying sons, which brings the local sheriff into the picture. She is befriended by an aging local rancher who provides food and shelter in return for mucking stalls for his livestock and exercising his racehorse, Dakota. When she goes to work at the factory farm, she witnesses how cruelly the animals are treated and tries to bring about changes. Already being shadowed by someone from her unknown past, she becomes the target of the factory farm management, who see her as a threat to their enterprise. The novel builds to high suspense when the man from her past and a hired killer from the factory farm get her in their gun sights.

Grimes, a long-time vegetarian, is donating a significant amount of her royalties from DAKOTA to select animal rights groups. As a long-time meat eater who especially enjoys a rack of ribs or a juicy steak, I must admit that my eyes were opened by this novel. It is not a diatribe or soap box, but those pristine packages of clear-wrapped chops and steaks look a little different to me now. I found myself Googling vegetarian recipes after I closed the book on the last chapter.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

Left me breathless!
I am a long-time fan of Martha Grimes and her Richard Jury series, as well as the stories about little Emma. For some reason I did not read "Bite the Moon" which is the introductory book to her other heroine, Andi Oliver. That is an oversight that I intend to correct now that I have read Dakota. I don't even know what to say about this book. It is so unexpected and so perfectly written. The characters are truly wonderful, and Andi is a delight. She is a young woman without a past and one who is used to making her own way. She also has a great love of animals, and they all relate to her. The expose that Ms. Grimes performs on the intensive hog raising industry is uncomforable to read about. We all sense that this is what it's like, but prefer not to think about it. And just watch how Andi handles herself! She comes up against one danger after another, and just handles each as they come up. She's a cracker! I loved this story.

The Road Taken
Andi Oliver, in a previous novel, underwent various traumatic experiences, and now suffers from amnesia. She remembers nothing of her previous 19 or 20 years, except for the past two years. She does remember shooting a man and running away, walking across three states, with short stopovers for waitress jobs to earn a few dollars, then continuing on her journey.

Walking down a dirt road near Kingdom, ND, she sees a mistreated donkey by a fence. She liberates it and treats various sores, afterwards taking it into town. Andi befriends a local widower who offers her a part-time job and room and board. Later, with time on her hands, she takes on another part-time job at a hog "factory farm," as well as at a nearby slaughterhouse, where she witnesses untold acts of cruelty toward the animals. These observations allow the author to feature her own beliefs in animal rights and vegetarianism.

Another element of the plot is the two men trailing Andi (who knows what her real name is? She adopted her current moniker from the initials "A O" on her backpack) across three states, one of whom seeks information from her past, which she can't remember. As in the previous novel that introduced Andi, Dakota is tender and appealing, as well as informative. One can assume we will be seeing Andi again, a good thing to be sure.