The latest offering from the mega-bestselling author of The Horse Whisperer involves a fractured family coming to terms with the dissolution of a marriage, and a death. When a young woman is found embedded in the ice of a Montana mountain creek, the police quickly discover that she is Abbie Cooper, long missing and long wanted by the FBI for murder and eco-terrorist activities. How she came to be there and her descent from "golden child" of a privileged New York family to one of the FBI's most wanted is a mystery that isn't fully solved until the last pages of the novel. Told alternately by various members of the Cooper family, the story is both tragic and redemptive. As with Evans's other novels, the landscape figures as prominently as the characters, though at times the descriptions are slightly overwritten and preachy. Nonetheless, this is an engaging story that Evans's fans will want to read. Recommended for public libraries and popular reading collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/05.]-Leslie Madden, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Evans demonstrates the same intricacy of plot and depth of characterization that defined his international best-seller The Horse Whisperer (1995). When the frozen body of a young woman is discovered in a -remote creek in the Rocky Mountains, the heartrending story of a family in crisis begins to unfold. Reaching back in time, members of the seemingly perfect Cooper family present their version of the events, emotions, and twists of fate that forever altered the benign course of their collective lives. After the unanticipated divorce of Sarah and Benjamin Cooper, their daughter, Abbie, becomes involved with a dangerous ecoterrorist group, while their son, Josh, drifts along in a marijuana-fueled haze. As they all move inexorably toward the ultimate tragedy, their individual perspectives coalesce, providing the reader with an opportunity to fully understand the toxic intersection of expectations, needs, and desires that inevitably caused their family unit to implode. Attempting to understand how and why Abbie wound up in the bottom of the creek, the Coopers are finally able to come to terms with the past and move toward the future. Sure to be a runaway success, this lyrical novel runs the gamut from devastation to despair to deliverance. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2005 Booklist

This fourth novel lacks the power and intensity of Evans's third, The Horse Whisperer (1995), and it's not nearly as carefully written. A pretty, upper-middle-class girl is discovered frozen in Montana ice and is soon identified as Abbie Cooper, wanted for murder by the FBI. After a promising beginning that introduces a colorful cast of Montana locals, Evans breaks off and flashes back to Abbie's upbringing in suburban New York, and centers the book on Abbie's now-divorced parents, Ben and Sarah. Evans follows the Coopers' high-end careers and estrangement from their domestic lives in meticulous, mind-numbing detail; their separation propels the already idealistic Abbie into the arms of Rolf, a shadowy eco-terrorist. As Abbie's Patty Hearst-like adventures in the eco-underworld slowly unfold, Ben takes up with Sante Fe-based artist Eve, and Sarah is left alone with son Josh, who emerges late in the novel as an improbable principal. Compelling minor characters like Sheriff Charlie Riggs and besieged ranchers Ray and Martha Hawkins are largely wasted. All winds down to a sadder, wiser, relatively reconciled ending that conforms to the norms of family drama, and of romance. The most vivid thing in the book is the wrangling early on over Abbie's remains. 500,000 first printing. Author tour. (Sept. 27) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The bestselling author of The Horse Whisperer (1995) returns to the rugged American West for this story of a damaged family's eventual redemption. The surface of Evans's latest is shaped as a mystery. Two skiers on the back trails in Montana find a body encased in ice, and it doesn't take long for the authorities to identify her as Abbie Cooper, wanted for eco-terrorism and murder. Her parents come to claim her body: Ben from Santa Fe, where he lives with his lover Eve, Sarah from the now-empty family home in Long Island. Sarah's cruel accusation that Ben is responsible for Abbie's death spins the story back to when they were a happy family . . . or at least had the appearance of one. Ben was studying architecture and Sarah was in college when they met. They romanced in the usual way, married, had Abbie and Josh and moved to the 'burbs. But the façade of marital harmony shatters on Ben's 46th birthday at the Divide, a Montana dude ranch, where he meets Eve. Everything that's wrong with Ben and Sarah (a lot) finally becomes too much to bear. Abbie takes her parents' split badly, and her youthful enthusiasm for saving the planet at the University of Montana turns dangerous after she meets Rolf, a cell leader for the Earth Liberation Front. When one of their fire-bombings goes wrong, Abbie and Rolf go underground to lead a quasi-criminal existence, despite her parents' televised appeals to turn herself in. Part thriller, part family drama, the novel is at its best in the analysis of Ben and Sarah's failed marriage. Evans examines in excruciating detail the intentional injury and petty selfishness that accompany their break-up. Abbie's disappearance lasts for years, with the FBI still watching the Coopers. It's up to Josh, shy and usually stoned, to bring the family some closure. An effective, if melancholy portrait. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.