(Track of the Cat is the acclaimed novel that first introd...)
Track of the Cat is the acclaimed novel that first introduced readers to Anna, as a woman looking for peace in the wilderness - and finding murder instead… Patrolling the remote West Texas backcountry, Anna’s first job as a national park ranger is marred by violence she thought she had left behind: the brutal death of a fellow ranger. When the cause of death is chalked up to a mountain lion attack, Anna’s rage knows no bounds. It’s up to her to save the protected cats from the politics and prejudices of the locals - and prove the kill was the work of a species far less rare…
(Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the ...)
Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship.
(Lately, visitors to Mesa Verde have been bringing home mo...)
Lately, visitors to Mesa Verde have been bringing home more than photos - they're also carrying a strange, deadly disease. And once it strikes, park ranger Anna Pigeon must find the very human source of the evil wind.
(A raging forest fire in California's Lassen Volcanic Nati...)
A raging forest fire in California's Lassen Volcanic National Park traps exhausted firefighters, including Ranger Anna Pigeon, in its midst. Afterward, Anna finds two from her group have been killed. One a victim of the flames. The other, stabbed through the heart. Now, as a rampaging winter storm descends, cutting the survivors off from civilization, Anna must uncover the murderer in their midst.
(Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, is a breatht...)
Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, is a breathtaking setting for tedious fire presuppression duty. But Anna’s boring routine is shattered when two men die in a plane crash, victims of sabotage.
(Park ranger Anna Pigeon is enjoying the open spaces of Co...)
Park ranger Anna Pigeon is enjoying the open spaces of Colorado when she receives an urgent call. A young woman has been injured while exploring a cave in New Mexico's Carlsbad Cavern Park. Before she can be pulled to safety, she sends for her friend Anna. Only one problem: a crushing fear of confined spaces has kept Anna out in the open her whole life.
(Anna Pigeon is in Manhattan to look after her hospitalize...)
Anna Pigeon is in Manhattan to look after her hospitalized sister, and explores the Statue of Liberty in her spare time. But when a teenage girl falls to her death from Liberty's ledge, Anna wonders if the suicide was actually a homicide-and begins an investigation that puts her in the line of fire.
(In Deep South, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon heads to Mississip...)
In Deep South, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon heads to Mississippi, only to encounter terrible secrets in the heart of the south… Anna Pigeon finally gives in to her bureaucratic clock-and signs on for a promotion. Next thing she knows, she's knee-deep in mud and Mississippi. Not exactly what she had in mind. Almost immediately, as the new district ranger on the Natchez Trace, Anna discovers the body of a young prom queen near a country cemetery, a sheet around her head, a noose around her neck. It's a bizarre twist on a best-forgotten past of frightening racial undertones.
(Straddling the border between Montana and Canada lies the...)
Straddling the border between Montana and Canada lies the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park - Anna’s home away from home when she is sent on a cross-training assignment to study grizzly bears. Along with bear researcher Joan Rand and a volatile, unpredictable teenage boy, Anna hikes the backcountry, seeking signs of bear. But the tables are turned on their second night out when one of the beasts comes looking for them. Daybreak finds the boy missing, a camper mutilated, and Anna caught in a grip of fear, painfully aware that her lifelong bond with nature has inexplicably snapped...
(The quiet beauty of autumn on Mississippi’s Natchez Trace...)
The quiet beauty of autumn on Mississippi’s Natchez Trace is swiftly shattered when Anna answers a call to Mt. Locust, once a working plantation and inn, now a tourist spot. But the man Anna finds in an old bedroom is no tourist in distress. He’s nearly naked, and very dead - his body bearing marks consistent with sex games gone awry. On a writing table nearby is an open Bible with ominous passages circled in red.
(Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory range...)
Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory ranger on remote Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, a small grouping of tiny islands in a natural harbor seventy miles off Key West. This island paradise has secrets it would keep; not just in the present, but in shadows from its gritty past, when it served as a prison for the Lincoln conspirators during and after the Civil War. Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for the occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper.
(It's fall in the Sierra Mountains, and Anna Pigeon is sli...)
It's fall in the Sierra Mountains, and Anna Pigeon is slinging hash in Yosemite National Park's historic Ahwahnee Hotel. Four young people, all seasonal park employees, have disappeared, and two weeks of work by crack search-and-rescue teams have failed to turn up a single clue; investigators are unsure as to whether the four went AWOL for reasons of their own - or died in the park. Needing an out-of-park ranger to work undercover, Anna is detailed to dining room duty; but after a week of waiting tables, she knows the missing employees are only the first indication of a sickness threatening the park. Her twenty-something roommates give up their party-girl ways and panic; her new restaurant colleagues regard her with suspicion and fear.
(Just days after marrying Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pige...)
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
(Soon after Anna Pigeon joins the famed wolf study team of...)
Soon after Anna Pigeon joins the famed wolf study team of Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior, the wolf packs begin to behave in peculiar ways. Giant wolf prints are found, and Anna spies the form of a great wolf from a surveillance plane. When a female member of the team is savaged, Anna is convinced they are being stalked, and what was once a beautiful, idyllic refuge becomes a place of unnatural occurrences and danger beyond the ordinary…
(Anna Pigeon and her husband Paul go to southwest Texas, w...)
Anna Pigeon and her husband Paul go to southwest Texas, where the Rio Grande is running high. The beauty of the Chihuahuan Desert and the power of the river work their magic - until the raft is lost in the rapids and a young college student makes a grisly discovery. Caught in a strainer between two boulders - and more dead than alive - is a pregnant woman. Anna will soon discover that nature isn’t the only one who wants to see the woman and her baby dead…
(In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the "Butche...)
In 1971, the state of Minnesota was rocked by the "Butcher Boy" incident, as coverage of a family brutally murdered by one of their own swept across newspapers and television screens nationwide. Now, in present-day New Orleans, Polly Deschamps finds herself at yet another lonely crossroads in her life. No stranger to tragedy, Polly was a runaway at the age of fifteen, escaping a nightmarish Mississippi childhood. Lonely, that is until she encounters architect Marshall Marchand. Polly is immediately smitten. She finds him attractive, charming, and intelligent. Marshall, a lifelong bachelor, spends most of his time with his brother Danny. When Polly’s two young daughters from her previous marriage are likewise taken with Marshall, she marries him.
(Anna Pigeon, a Ranger with the National Park Service, is ...)
Anna Pigeon, a Ranger with the National Park Service, is newly married but on administrative leave from her job as she recovers from the traumas of the past couple of months. While the physical wounds have healed, the emotional ones are still healing. With her new husband back at work, Anna decides to go and stay with an old friend from the Park Service, Geneva, who works as a singer at the New Orleans Jazz NHP. She isn't in town long before she crosses paths with a tenant of Geneva's, a creepy guy named Jordan. She discovers what seems to be an attempt to place a curse on her - a gruesomely killed pigeon marked with runic symbols, and begins to slowly find traces of very dark doings in the heart of post-Katrina New Orleans.
(The promise of discretion and pampering-and a long-overdu...)
The promise of discretion and pampering-and a long-overdue reconciliation with her mother-draws Caroline Blessing, the young wife of a newly-elected Congressman, to the fancy Phoenix Spa. But after her first night in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, Caroline wakes to find the rich and famous guests in turmoil and under suspicion: the spa's flamboyant and ambitious owner has been murdered. As the secrets come out-and the body count rises, can Caroline keep herself from becoming the next victim?
(Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a season...)
Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. On her day off, Anna goes hiking into the park never to return. Her co-workers think she's simply moved on - her cabin is cleaned out and her things gone. But Anna herself wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a dry natural well, naked, without supplies and no clear memory of how she found herself in this situation. As she slowly pieces together her memory, it soon becomes clear that someone has trapped her there, in an inescapable prison, and no one knows that she is even missing.
(Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the United States Park Services...)
Anna Pigeon, a ranger for the United States Park Services, sets off on vacation - an autumn canoe trip in the to the Iron Range in upstate Minnesota. With Anna is her friend Heath, a paraplegic; Heath's fifteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth; Leah, a wealthy designer of outdoor equipment; and her daughter, Katie, who is thirteen. For Heath and Leah, this is a shakedown cruise to test a new cutting edge line of camping equipment. The equipment, designed by Leah, will make camping and canoeing more accessible to disabled outdoorsmen. On their second night out, Anna goes off on her own for a solo evening float on the Fox River. When she comes back, she finds that four thugs, armed with rifles, pistols, and knives, have taken the two women and their teenaged daughters captive.
(The target is Elizabeth, the adopted teenage daughter of ...)
The target is Elizabeth, the adopted teenage daughter of her friend Heath Jarrod. Elizabeth is driven to despair by the disgusting rumors spreading online and bullying texts. Until, one day, Heath finds her daughter Elizabeth in the midst of an unsuccessful suicide attempt. And then she calls in the cavalry - her aunt Gwen and her friend Anna Pigeon. While they try to deal with the fragile state of affairs and find the person behind the harassment - the three adults decide the best thing to do is to remove Elizabeth from the situation. Since Anna is about to start her new post as Acting Chief Ranger at Acadia National Park in Maine, the three will join her and stay at a house on the cliff of a small island near the park, Boar Island.
(Rose Dennis wakes up in a hospital gown, her brain in a f...)
Rose Dennis wakes up in a hospital gown, her brain in a fog, only to discover that she's been committed to an Alzheimer's Unit in a nursing home. With no memory of how she ended up in this position, Rose is sure that something is very wrong. When she overhears one of the administrators saying about her that she's "not making it through the week," Rose is convinced that if she's to survive, she has to get out of the nursing home. She avoids taking her medication, putting on a show for the aides, then stages her escape.
Nevada Barr is an American writer and novelist. She is an award-winning novelist and New York Times best-selling author. She has a growing number of Anna Pigeon mysteries to her credit as well as numerous other books, short stories, and articles.
Background
Nevada Barr was born on March 1, 1952, in Yerington, Nevada and grew up in Johnstonville, California. Although Barr was born in Yerington, Nevada, she was named not after her state of birth but after a character in one of her father's favorite books. Her parents, Mary, and Dave Barr ran a little airport. Her mother and father were both pilots as was her sister Molly, who was an airline pilot for US Air (Rancourt). Barr’s mother, who was a mechanic, carpenter, and one of the first women to be featured in People Magazine, still owns a small ranch on the East side of the Sierras and on the edge of the Smoke Creek Desert (Eckels).
Education
Nevada attended college at Cal Polly, San Luis Obispo where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in speech and drama. Following college, Barr attended graduate school at the University of California at Irvine where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting.
After graduate school, Barr spent eighteen years in acting and did voice-overs (Rancourt). While in New York she was a member of the Classic Stage Company and performed in many off-Broadway plays. She also participated in corporate training films, television commercials, industrial films, radio voice-overs, and regional theater (Eckels). After spending five years in New York, Nevada Barr traveled to Minneapolis, and while there she did even more theater work. When she moved to Mississippi, she did commercials for Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Before she began writing full-time, she became a National Park Service Ranger. Her first husband was a member of the National Park Service. It was he who first raised her interest in wildlife conservation.
Her first job was a boat patrol at Isle Royale (Rancourt). Her stay in many different parks serves as the settings for her mystery novels. Nevada began earnestly writing in 1978. Her motivation for writing was “a desire for women to do more to move along the plot more because all the women I knew were movers and doers.”
Nevada’s first historical book, Bittersweet, was completed in 1984 (Rancourt). After her first book, she decided to begin writing mystery novels. She first checked out mystery books from the library and outlined several of the best. The idea for her first mystery novel Track of the Cat, which was set in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, came to her while she was hiking through the woods. She thought about the multiple ways a person could die and about the ones she believed would be better off dead.
Nevada won the 1994 Agatha Award for best first novel of 1993 and the 1994 and the Anthony award for best novel of 1993. She has been awarded the Mississippi Library Association’s Award for fiction. In 2010 Nevada Barr received the Robin W. Winks Award given to people who enhance public understanding of the National Parks. She also won the 2015 Pinckley Prize for a Distinguished Body of Work for her Anna Pigeon series.
Other mystery novels include A Superior Death, set in Isle Royale National Park; Ill Wind, set in Mesa Verde National Park; Firestorm, set in Lassen Volcanic Deep South by Nevada BarrNational Park; and Endangered Species, set at Cumberland Island National Seashore (Rancourt). In her mystery novels, Nevada uses a character named Anna Pigeon.
There are several parallels between Nevada Barr and the character Anna Pigeon. They are both (or have been) law enforcement officers in their forties, both have a sister named Molly, and both left the big city and went into the National Park Service (Rancourt). Barr says her main purpose for writing is to make people love the parks. Blind Descent was published in 1998. Her book Liberty Falling was published in February of 1999.
Since writing Deep South, Barr has resigned from the park service.
While living in Mississippi, Nevada Barr taught a fiction writing class at Mississippi College. She published the Anna Pigeon mystery called Winter Study, (set on Isle Royale in the dark days of January when the island is inhabited only by the wolves, the moose, and the researchers who are there to study them) in April of 2008. Since then Barr has published Destroyer Angel (2014), The Rope (2012), Burn (2010), Borderline (2009), and 13 1/2 (2009).
Her most recent novel Boar Island is set in Acadia National Park in Maine. It was released in 2016. She is a New York Times best-selling author who has now published numerous Anna Pigeon novels as well as other works.
Nevada Barr's major achievement is in becoming one of America's most beloved mystery writers. Barr has received a number of awards and nominations for her work. Her début novel, Track of the Cat, won the 1994 Anthony Award and Agatha Award for "Best First Novel". Her next novel, Superior Death, was nominated for the Dilys Award in 1995. Firestorm was nominated for the 1997 Anthony Award in the "Best Novel" category. Blind Descent was the next novel to receive attention from the mystery community, receiving a "Best Novel" nomination at the 1999 Anthony Awards, Dilys Awards and the Macavity Awards in the same year. Deep South, published in 2000, won the Barry Award for "Best Novel" and was again nominated for the Anthony Award in the same category.
In 2011, the National Parks Conservation Association honored her with the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks. She was a recipient of the 2015 Pinckley Prize for Crime Fiction award given to a woman writer who has created a significant body of work. Barr accepted her award at the 29th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival on March 26, 2015.
(The target is Elizabeth, the adopted teenage daughter of ...)
2016
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"I don’t write with a message in mind because I think the message should come out of the character and the story naturally, but yes, I hope so. And I hope I encourage women to go into law enforcement. I hope I encourage women at 45 who have just finished a career teaching and who have always wanted to go into the parks to just “do it.” I didn’t go in the Park Service until I was 36 years old. I want to encourage women to do what they want, what they love. And, I want to encourage people to take care of parks. People who love the parks will take care of the parks because they mean so much to us. I am hoping people who have never gone to a park will read my books and will now vote for park measures. I hope they’ll think “Oh yeah, I read about that and it sounds like a cool place.”
Quotations:
"I have to balance artistic integrity with material greed. Material greed won this time, but I'm hoping artistic integrity will win in the next few years."
"I wrote tons and tons and tons my whole life, just like other people chew their fingernails. I just did it. I wrote letters and poems and short stories, but not for publication - just for screwing around. I started writing my first book because, as an actor, I got sick to death of all those women’s roles. They were just vapid and so few and far between that I decided I’d write a book and then I’d star in it when they made the movie."
"Learn to speak well, write well, and read well. Then you can do anything. I got along quite well in the Park Service with an acting degree. Or you can specialize. Go into the zoological sciences. There is such a wide range of things you can do. The more specialized you are the better. You might be able to find your niche a little more quickly."
“…my second summer I was wandering around the back country in West Texas and there were a couple of people there that needed to be dead. And I was fantasizing about ways that I could kill them and get away with it and kind of the whole story of the Anna Pigeon character came alive.”
Personality
As a teenager, Nevada learned to fly from her mother (Eckels). Here is what Nevada stated about things that she enjoys to do now in her life besides writing: "I do some mountain climbing, some caving, some scuba diving, and I have been on a wildfire. Basically, I do the “baby version” to see what it’s like, but I do love like hiking and canoeing. For the scary stuff like cold water diving, I do the “readers’ digest” trip and then talk to people who do the scary bit and just make up my story around that. I’m not a dare-devil."
Nevada Barr was married to Richard Jones of Clinton, Mississippi, but the two have divorced in a bitter court battle. After divorcing her second husband, she moved from Clinton, Mississippi, (where she had lived for more than six years) to New Orleans with a new husband Donald Paxton, three dogs, and four cats.
