BOOK NOTES by Joan Ruddiman
Mystery lovers know Anna Pigeon as the intrepid heroine of Nevada Barr’s novels. In 2000, Ms. Barr hit the big time when "Deep South" made it to the New York Times Best Seller list. Her legions of fans in the real deep South and Far West must be chuckling that it took the rest of us so long to catch on.
Anna Pigeon is a "40 something" parks ranger with the National Park Service. Her job takes her across the country to beautifully rugged mountains, deserts and islands. Park Service duties invariably get mixed up with murder and Anna is called upon to exercise her intellect and intuition.
Nevada Barr is the real name of a woman who has a bit in common with her popular character Anna Pigeon. Though born in Nevada, her name comes from a character in one of her father’s books. Her parents were pilots, as is her sister, Molly, now retired. Anna also has a sister named Molly, though she is a psychiatrist. In one of Ms. Barr’s more unusual settings, she has Anna stationed for a spell in New York City in order to be near Molly, who is hospitalized. Anna stays busy at Ellis Island, on the backside where the many buildings are dilapidated and unstabilized. Ms. Barr calls this area of the Ellis Island park, "the world’s biggest haunted house." She makes good use of the setting in "Liberty Falling," published in 1999.
Like Anna, Ms. Barr lived for a time in Manhattan where she was an actress. (She has her character, Anna, as the widow of a New York actor.) Ms. Barr’s background is theater. She holds a B.A. in speech and drama and an M.F.A. in acting. She did some Broadway, commercials, moved to Minneapolis and did industrial films, radio voice-overs and the like. Along the way, she married a guy who worked for the Park Service, took an interest in conservation, and wound up working part time as a park ranger at Natchez Trace in Mississippi.
The common thread throughout the disparate jobs and homes was Ms. Barr’s love of writing. She wrote campfire stories, was a travel writer and reviewed restaurants. In 1978, she began writing in earnest. Her first book was published in 1984 with so little fanfare that in 1994 she won the Agatha Award for "Best First Novel in 1993" for her first mystery, "Track of the Cat," which also won the Anthony. The character of Anna, and her latest career, was launched.
The trick in the mystery business is to create a likable character, unlike others, and put them in interesting places. Anna Pigeon, named for a co-worker of her former husband, is not only in the image of her creator, but also of the women who read her. Though it is fun that she is a woman, we do have more female P.I. characters now to choose from. That she is a park ranger is definitely unique. Anna’s job is fascinating, but physically and emotionally hard. She hikes, dives, swims and rides a horse hard not as a super woman but very believably as she feels all the aches at the end of the day. Women who read Ms. Barr may not spend the day tracking down a grizzly in Glacier National Park, ("Blood Lure"), but we can identify with Anna as she works too many hours, has too many people to answer to, and too many jobs to handle at one time. And like the author who is more something than 40 (born in 1952), her "40 something" readers can appreciate Anna’s preference to have a quiet night in rather than a date with the latest man in her life.
Ms. Barr has taken some flak from the Park Service for how she portrays the inner workings of this government agency. Anna, however, as a ranger takes delight in being irreverent in her asides about policy makers and the politics of the agency. Administrative types are easy targets for Anna’s barbs. However, the Park Service should be delighted in how the lands are vividly portrayed by Ms. Barr. Each book is a textual commercial for open space.
In the dozen Anna Pigeon books, Ms. Barr has repeated a location only once; Anna returns to Natchez Trace in "Hunting Season." Settings include Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior, where a diver finds more than a sunken ship; Mesa Verde in Colorado, the home of the vanished Anasazi; and Lassen Volcanic National Park where suspicious forest fires combine with murder. "Firestorm" won the French Prix du Roman and an Anthony nomination in 1996. Anna chases drug runners off the coast of Georgia in the Cumberland Island National Seashore, enters the newly discovered Lechugilla Cave at Carlsbad in New Mexico in "Blind Descent" and in the latest, "Flashback," Anna travels to Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles off Key West.
Ms. Barr also has an anthology of short mystery stories, and with novelist Val McDermid, a look into the P.I. genre with "A Suitable Job for a Woman: Inside the World of Women Private Eyes."
With awards, including the Edgar, and extensive critical and popular acclaim, Ms. Barr most likely won’t give up this gig. However, she is venturing into the world beyond mystery with what sounds like some self-reflection: "Seeking Enlightenment, Hat by Hat," coming in June.
Joan Ruddiman is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.

