All Around Me Peaceful

Neil Shanks journeys from Michigan to a small Colorado town in order to unveil the mystery surrounding the origins of his great-grandfather's considerable wealth. He befriends married but hot-blooded Becky Carlsson and lends her serious literature, prompting a salt-of-the-earth local to ask the hackneyed question: `` `You think the books have made her different?' '' As snow begins to fall, Becky disappears on her way to meet her husband in the mountains. The search for her is so extensive that it becomes emblematic of Everyman's quest for existential enlightenment. Subthemes here concern Native American claims, elk-hunting season and a sheriff unable to arrive at independent moral decisions. But the drama is too slender to support these overworked discourses and ends anticlimactically and with lame truisms: ``But Becky had changed him. She had shown him a person's history could not tell him what he was capable of or what he might do next.'' Nelson is the author of Cold Wind River. (May)