In Too Deep

Best-selling author Nevada Barr has written 16 novels with park ranger Anna Pigeon as protagonist. Now she’s written a prequel in the 17th book of the series.

Barr takes the reader back to 1995 for a look at Pigeon’s first assignment with the National Park Service, at Glen Canyon Recreational Area in the Four Corners area.

Pigeon finds herself naked in a dry natural well – or solution hole – unsure why or how she got there. Apparently someone has trapped her in the well and no one is coming to her rescue. Pigeon needs to muster her skills and her courage and map a plan for her survival and hoped-for escape. And even if she does bring herself out, there’s no guarantee of safety on the surface.

	“The Rope, An Anna Pigeon Novel” by Nevada Barr Minotaur Books, $25.99, 357 pp.

Barr envisioned the well about 30 feet deep.

“But picture a beautiful jug and bury it neck-deep in earth. That’s what a solution hole is like,” Barr said in a phone interview from her home in New Orleans.

Barr said she had driven past Glen Canyon though never explored it before visiting it for about one week last summer.

“I saw a picture of a solution hole on the Internet. I thought, ‘This is it. This is my park to bring Anna from an urban area to the wilderness because Lake Powell is a man-made lake,’ ” she said. “And it’s a perfect place where wilderness and humanity come crashing together for good and evil.”

Barr said she had wanted to set this novel in what she called “a simple park. I thought, it’s a lake, it’s like a bathtub. And it’s one of the most complicated parks I’ve ever been in because of the recreational aspects. … People have more liberties.”

Additionally, Barr said, the area brings together “a history that was drowned” when the lake was created, then exposed as the water level has receded. Then there’s the matter of the boundaries, she said, because the recreation area cuts through three states and the Navajo Reservation.

Barr already is at work on Anna Pigeon novel No. 18, scheduled for release next year. It is set in Acadia National Park in Maine.

Barr herself served as a park ranger at Isle Royale, Mesa Verde, Natchez Trace Parkway and had special duties at a number of other parks. She has lived in New Orleans since 2004.

“I like New Orleans because nobody cares who you are. It really is The Big Easy. I went out on a Take Back the Night (event). On one side of me was a guy in tall heels and a silver dress. On the other was a clown of indeterminate gender and a soccer mom. Everybody gets along fine,” Barr said.

Nevada Barr discusses, signs “The Rope” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18, at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW.