cover image On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery

On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery

Sue Hallgarth. Arbor Farm (Itasca, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (262p) ISBN 978-0-9855200-0-7

Hallgarth, a Willa Cather scholar, gives starring roles to the great writer and her partner, Edith Lewis, in this rocky debut. The couple have found the perfect place to unwind and spend the summer of 1929: the picturesque island of Grand Manan in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, where Willa works in peace on her new novel, Shadows on the Rock, and Edith focuses on her painting. Violence invades their haven when Edith spies a man plunging off one of the majestic cliffs to his death. The island’s idyllic atmosphere tends to smother the suspense, but interest picks up once Willa and Edith begin finding evidence implicating several of the peaceful-seeming islanders in the fatal fall. Though Hallgarth offers a well-researched portrait of Grand Manan’s tiny community, her scenic but bland whodunit is defeated by stilted dialogue and a protagonist who rarely amounts to more than a famous name. (Feb.)