Valerie Nieman Colander

This is less a mystery than a coming of age/figuring out life story. Maggie lives much of her life in her head, is highly responsible, and loves to sail her small vessel. She has friends, but as the story progresses, they abandon her. First, her cousin Charisse vanishes, only to turn up dead a few days later, another friend can no longer tolerate his family's rigidity and runs away, while the third gets a girlfriend and is forced to distance himself to keep that relationship. Her mother abandoned her when she was very small, and her father who manages a slowly dying marina, is in the process of drinking himself to death.
While Charisse's possible murder is initially the driving force here, the story expands to include Maggie's fascination with stolen writings by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist describing an expedition to Lapland, they turn her into a careful observer, not only of nature, but of people.
Her descriptions of sailing, the people around her, and her sailing trips, all enhance the story. While some readers will deduce what really happened to Charisse before it's revealed, that seems secondary to Maggie's sorting life out and surviving. Altogether a fine work of fiction.… (meer)

To the Bones by Valerie Nieman combines the fun of a sci-fi/fantasy novel with a serious critique of greed in business, especially when that greed leads to environmental harm. It is set in a small, coal mining town in West Virginia. The coal industry is waning, but the business leaders in charge have found a way to keep exploiting the people and the land surrounding them.

Darrick, a mild-mannered government auditor, traveling alone, goes off the highway for gas and ends up in a pile of human bones in what appears to be a small cave but is actually a mine crack. He's been beaten, has a serious injury to his head and has been left for dead. He still manages to climb out of the hole. He can't remember what happened to him, so he limps off seeking help. Darrick is taken in by a strong willed woman named Lourana who has her own problems. Lourana's adult daughter, Dreama, is missing and Dreama is not the sort of woman to lose contact with her mother unless she's in serious trouble.

I loved the characters in this story, especially Louranna. She's a working class woman who manages a sweepstakes parlor. She knows taking in a stranger could be dangerous, but she helps Darrick because she feels it is the right thing to do. Darrick is also interesting as he learns he has a lot more going for him than he first realized. Their relationship is the core of the novel. The secondary characters are also well developed from the townspeople who think they've seen a Zombie to an ex detective who has been relegated to cleaning offices.

The sci-fi/fantasy aspect to the novel centers on abilities Darrick has and on abilities members of the wealthy Kavanagh family have. The progress Darrick makes to understand and use his skills for good is a major part of the plot, but the growth in his confidence is just as important.

To the Bones is excellently written by Valerie Nieman. I listened to the audio version read by Eric Fritzius. He also did a wonderful job. The story helped shorten a long trip I took.… (meer)

At first, I wasn't sure I'd be able to get into this story. The first chapter doesn't immediately allow the reader any insight into where the protagonist (Darrick) is or how he got there. That's intentional. We're experiencing the scene through Darrick's own confusion. Starting a story with that type of confusion and without any fast-approaching light dawning tends to turn me away. It felt like an attempt to kickstart the mystery of the story, but with a bit too much tease.

That said, I pressed on to the second chapter and from there discovered a taut tale of power and intrigue. Darrick awoke in a mine crack full of bones and with a nasty head wound that seems to have given him new destructive psychic powers. He soon finds himself the hidden ward of a local diner owner, Loudron, whose daughter has gone missing and, she fears, met a horrible fate at the hands of the coal town's rich puppeteers the Kavanaughs. As their lives become entwined, our heroes decide to uncover the truth about what happened to Darrick and the daughter.

I enjoyed this story and getting to know the characters, especially after I got into chapter two and beyond. It's a fun ride through a small town in which the powerful puppet masters of a dying coal industry are still able to pull the strings on a working class populace.
… (meer)