Dee LaGuerre, a Bureau of Land Management ranger, has divorced her yuppie environmental lawyer husband and returned to her home county in Nevada. Her job puts her in conflict with the cattle ranchers she's known all her life -- even more than she already was, having grown up as the daughter of a Basque sheeprancher. Her environmental sympathies also pit her against her supervisor, a go-along to get-along type. And by the way, her best friend is a madam.
Kirk Mitchell has written a highly nuanced tale that gives exactly what I wanted from my choice for a Nevada book -- the landscape and culture of the state outside Las Vegas. There are no black-and-white characters in this book -- even the villains can enlist a little bit of our sympathy. At the end, the major crime is solved, but we are not sure exactly what will happen next, except that Dee LaGuerre will continue to deal with ambiguity while doing her best to protect the high desert she loves. Recommended. ( )