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Anna Pigeon #11
Flashback
The five-week New York Times bestseller, now in paperback.Running from a proposal of marriage from Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory ranger on remote Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, a small grouping of tiny islands in a natural harbor seventy miles off Key West. This island paradise has secrets it would keep; not just in the present, but in shadows from its gritty past, when it served as a prison for the Lincoln conspirators during and after the Civil War.
Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for the occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper. When her sister, Molly, sends her a packet of letters from a great-great-aunt who lived at the fort with her husband, a career soldier, Anna's fantasy life is filled with visions of this long-ago time.
When a mysterious boat explosion-and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts-keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. Cut off from the mainland by miles of water, poor phone service, and sketchy radio contact, and aided by one law-enforcement ranger, Anna must find answers or weather a storm to rival the hurricanes for which the islands are famous.
Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for the occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper. When her sister, Molly, sends her a packet of letters from a great-great-aunt who lived at the fort with her husband, a career soldier, Anna's fantasy life is filled with visions of this long-ago time.
When a mysterious boat explosion-and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts-keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. Cut off from the mainland by miles of water, poor phone service, and sketchy radio contact, and aided by one law-enforcement ranger, Anna must find answers or weather a storm to rival the hurricanes for which the islands are famous.
383 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
342 people are currently reading
1918 people want to read
About the author
Nevada Barr
66 books2,292 followersNevada Barr is a mystery fiction author, known for her "Anna Pigeon" series of mysteries, set in National Parks in the United States. Barr has won an Agatha Award for best first novel for Track of the Cat.
Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.
While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).
Currently, Ms. Barr lives in New Orleans, LA.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/nevada...
Barr was named after the state of her birth. She grew up in Johnstonville, California. She finished college at the University of California, Irvine. Originally, Barr started to pursue a career in theatre, but decided to be a park ranger. In 1984 she published her first novel, Bittersweet, a bleak lesbian historical novel set in the days of the Western frontier.
While working in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Barr created the Anna Pigeon series. Pigeon is a law enforcement officer with the United States National Park Service. Each book in the series takes place in a different National Park, where Pigeon solves a murder mystery, often related to natural resource issues. She is a satirical, witty woman whose icy exterior is broken down in each book by a hunky male to whom she is attracted (such as Rogelio).
Currently, Ms. Barr lives in New Orleans, LA.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/nevada...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 522 reviews
April 21, 2022
In FLASHBACK, the 11th book in the park ranger Anna Pigeon series, Anna has taken a temporary assignment at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas off Key West, Florida. One of the things I absolutely love about this series is the way that each book takes you to a different national park, and the setting is described in such exquisite detail that it’s like really being there. This setting was especially fun to read about as Key West is so different to the parks Anna has worked in before. Someone goes missing, requiring a search at sea, some perilous scuba diving investigation, and the remains of an explosion are found. This book is written in dual timelines, with part of the action taking place in flashback through a series of letters Anna reads from the 19th century when Dr. Samuel Mudd (the physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg after the Lincoln assassination) was a prisoner there. Very interesting stuff in both timelines.
July 12, 2021
When Dry Tortugas National Park came up in conversation last week I remembered that we owned this book in audio format and decided to give it a try.
I can't really say enough good things about this book! I don't know how typical it is of the series. (As I understand it, the personal life of Anna Pigeon, the main character, is often highlighted in the books and that's not typically a plus for me.)
The series aside, on its own merits, this book is definitely 5 stars for me. National Park Service law enforcement officer Anna Pigeon is temporarily stationed at Dry Tortugas after the previous agent in charge had a breakdown upon being left by his girlfriend. Shortly after she arrives all manner of bizarre and illegal events start happening, and the high-action plot is off and running.
Parallel to this story is another, set in 1865 at Ft. Jefferson (which takes up most of the park), a Union military prison at the time. Anna is given a cache of letters written by one of her great-great-aunts who was the wife of the commanding officer. That story line involves, among others, Ft. Jefferson's most famous inmate, Samuel Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth's leg after Lincoln's assassination. This story line is equally thrilling.
So, we have a super location, a couple of compelling plot lines, and a number of strong female characters. What more could I want? Excellent writing, that's what, and Nevada Barr delivers. She moves smoothly between the third person recounting of Anna's contemporary story and the first person tale related in the 19th century letters.
The icing on the cake is that the narrator is one of my favorites, Barbara Rosenblat. She's SO good with feisty women characters.
I can't really say enough good things about this book! I don't know how typical it is of the series. (As I understand it, the personal life of Anna Pigeon, the main character, is often highlighted in the books and that's not typically a plus for me.)
The series aside, on its own merits, this book is definitely 5 stars for me. National Park Service law enforcement officer Anna Pigeon is temporarily stationed at Dry Tortugas after the previous agent in charge had a breakdown upon being left by his girlfriend. Shortly after she arrives all manner of bizarre and illegal events start happening, and the high-action plot is off and running.
Parallel to this story is another, set in 1865 at Ft. Jefferson (which takes up most of the park), a Union military prison at the time. Anna is given a cache of letters written by one of her great-great-aunts who was the wife of the commanding officer. That story line involves, among others, Ft. Jefferson's most famous inmate, Samuel Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth's leg after Lincoln's assassination. This story line is equally thrilling.
So, we have a super location, a couple of compelling plot lines, and a number of strong female characters. What more could I want? Excellent writing, that's what, and Nevada Barr delivers. She moves smoothly between the third person recounting of Anna's contemporary story and the first person tale related in the 19th century letters.
The icing on the cake is that the narrator is one of my favorites, Barbara Rosenblat. She's SO good with feisty women characters.
July 26, 2014
Nevada Barr is not a good writer. As I've said in other reviews, sometimes her sentences are so convoluted, so idiomatic - with idioms of her own making, that no one else has ever come across before - that you have to read them three times to understand what her meaning is. She also is not good at varying sentence structure. About a billion times in every book you'll see the same sentence structure back to back to back, which dulls the reading senses and drags the reader into an unpleasant rhythm. Barr needs to take some serious writing classes and have serious teachers point out her flaws. But this isn't the reason for the one star.
The novel runs along parallel tracks; alternating chapters tell Anna Pigeon's story in contemporary times, as Anna, on temporary assignment in a national park close to the Florida Keys, tries to figure out why a boat blew up and who was on it and what they were up to. She then receives a packet of letters from her sister Molly - letters from their great great great aunt Raffia of the Civil War era, who coincidentally was stationed at Fort Jefferson in the same national park where Anna is living, with her husband. The Civil War is over and Raffia's husband is in charge of a regiment of men guarding the prisoners of Fort Jefferson, the most famous of whom is Dr. Samuel Mudd, given life imprisonment for aiding and abetting the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. (Mudd had set John Wilkes Booth's broken leg.)
I usually find historical fiction a hard pill to swallow. I also hate the alternating chapters gimmick. Inevitably you dislike one story line and enjoy the other, which makes half the book dreadful and painstaking. Raffia and her family's story and the story of the tenants of Fort Jefferson bored me utterly. Then, as you can imagine, Anna Pigeon starts to hallucinate the characters she is reading about in the letters. So, as she is wont to do, she runs around at night in complete darkness and is terrified to see a woman in white whom she thinks is Raffia. Needless to say, this is stupid. But this is not why I rated the book one star. There were enough plot elements - just barely - in the contemporary setting to warrant two stars.
Is the one star because Anna Pigeon spends an entire chapter wondering if two old lesbian lighthouse keepers are transgender? She looks for "signs of a vestigial X chromosome." When one lesbian rubs her cheek Anna ponders whether she is "checking for five o'clock shadow." No. Barr is kind of an idiot, so this is not entirely unexpected coming from her. Is the one star because Anna hopes that "Cuban Hispanics had the same cultural love of family and children she'd noticed in Mexican-American women"? No. Again, Barr has a screw loose. This screw often rattles around in her brain and causes her to place the thoughts of the demented in her characters.
The one star is for the unbelievable, stunning, really inexcusable number of typos and errors in the text. Does Barr have an editor? If so that person should have been fired for letting this book go to press. There were dozens of errors. I didn't even bother counting (I sometimes do) because there were so many. Words are spelled differently several pages apart (sergeant, sergent). Apostrophes were in the wrong place. Apostrophes were inserted in words where they didn't belong. Sometimes "were" was spelled "where" and vice versa. Tolkien is spelled Tolkein. We come across the phrase "despite his straightened circumstances" - which of course should be "straitened circumstances." You expect these kinds of typos from self-published crap books. You don't expect it from a major publisher. What's up with that, G.P. Putnam?
January 3, 2017
Slow to start, once you're interested kicks into gear, this is a pretty good story with a historic twist to it. Anna Pigeon, the independent park ranger who seems to make it a career goal to work at every national park in the U.S., is now serving a temporary assignment in Dry Tortugas National Park, just off Key West. The Tortugas was the site of a union fort used as a prison for confederate solder and the Lincoln conspirators and as such was once the home of one of Anna's early relatives and the location of a mystery told in letters from her relative, the wife of the fort's commander.
Meanwhile Anna, who has received a proposal of marriage from her boyfriend in Mississippi and fled the scene while she figures out whether to accept, is caught up in a mystery at the crumbling park site. Both mysteries have people from the past and present wondering who to trust and who not in situations that quickly get out of hand. Two stories building to a crescendo that will keep you riveted to your seat.
Meanwhile Anna, who has received a proposal of marriage from her boyfriend in Mississippi and fled the scene while she figures out whether to accept, is caught up in a mystery at the crumbling park site. Both mysteries have people from the past and present wondering who to trust and who not in situations that quickly get out of hand. Two stories building to a crescendo that will keep you riveted to your seat.
January 23, 2013
Nevada Barr once again has scared me silly. I will never, so help me NEVER, go out on one of the many weensy islands that surround Florida. Too many really unspeakable things can happen, when you're trapped out there, especially if the weather gets bad and they close the bridge!
Barr is as usual brilliant for her character development as well as a tight, no-wasted-words plot that will leave your brain like a humming wire for hours after the book is done. If you like thrillers, read the work of a woman who knows her subject matter well, and can really write!
Barr is as usual brilliant for her character development as well as a tight, no-wasted-words plot that will leave your brain like a humming wire for hours after the book is done. If you like thrillers, read the work of a woman who knows her subject matter well, and can really write!
April 9, 2025
Another excellent installment in the life of Anna Pigeon, a National Park Service employee who goes where she's needed. In this book, she's in Dry Tortugas National Park in Key West, Florida, a park that in a former life was Fort Jefferson, a Union prison in the time immediately following the US Civil War.
Anna is by no means perfect or infallible, but I really like how she does what needs to be done whether she feels comfortable doing it or not. She has skills and knowledge that are at times astounding, but she shrugs it off as just part of her job. Despite being disappointed time and time again, she tries to see the positive in most situations, and is loyal to her friends and co-workers - until they prove she's wrong to trust them.
This book has a dueling timeline thing going on, a current-day mystery and a story going back to the days of Fort Jefferson. Bouncing back and forth between the timelines wasn't a problem, as it was clear where in time we were with each bounce. It was a bit hard to get my mind to change gears, though, since the stories and their mysteries were entirely different.
In the current-day case, I thought knew what was going on, but was only partially correct. I was astonished to learn who was involved, as it was a character I liked up until that point in the book. The Fort Jefferson case was more complicated, but I did figure out who was behind everything, but could not determine why until it was explained.
It looks like Anna will be returning to Natchez, Mississippi, in the next book, and I look forward to seeing where some of the decisions she made in this book take her from here.
Anna is by no means perfect or infallible, but I really like how she does what needs to be done whether she feels comfortable doing it or not. She has skills and knowledge that are at times astounding, but she shrugs it off as just part of her job. Despite being disappointed time and time again, she tries to see the positive in most situations, and is loyal to her friends and co-workers - until they prove she's wrong to trust them.
This book has a dueling timeline thing going on, a current-day mystery and a story going back to the days of Fort Jefferson. Bouncing back and forth between the timelines wasn't a problem, as it was clear where in time we were with each bounce. It was a bit hard to get my mind to change gears, though, since the stories and their mysteries were entirely different.
In the current-day case, I thought knew what was going on, but was only partially correct. I was astonished to learn who was involved, as it was a character I liked up until that point in the book. The Fort Jefferson case was more complicated, but I did figure out who was behind everything, but could not determine why until it was explained.
It looks like Anna will be returning to Natchez, Mississippi, in the next book, and I look forward to seeing where some of the decisions she made in this book take her from here.
November 23, 2020
Anna Pigeon leaves her assignment on the Natchez Trace Parkway to temporarily fill the shoes as Chief Ranger at Dry Tortugas National Park off the coast of Key West. The ranger there is on medical leave as others question his sanity. Anna receives a packet of letters written by an ancestor who accompanied her husband to Fort Jefferson during the Civil War, the main feature of the national park. The present story involves a boat explosion, the injury of the other law enforcement ranger, dives to learn more about the boat and its potential business, and more. The past story dealing with the Lincoln Conspirators imprisoned in Fort Jefferson is told completely through the letters. Each story could stand on its own--and probably should have. I love historical fiction, but I read Nevada Barr's work for Anna's story and found myself tiring of the endless letters. They occupied far too much of the story, and I found myself asking whether her ancestor would have written such long letters. While I enjoyed both stories, they didn't really work that well together. This is more of a 3.25 star read than a 3.0. I listened to the audio book narrated by Barbara Rosenblat.
November 10, 2011
I hadn't listened to a Nevada Barr mystery in a long time, but remember them as being pretty good. This one was on sale on Audible.com, so I bit, and it's narrated by Barbara Rosenblatt, who is very good.
It takes place on Tortuga Island, off Key West, where there's apparently an old Civil War Fort and the National Park Service maintains it. Anna is subbing for a supervisor who's gone off the deep end, and has been sent some old letters written by an ancestor whose husband was stationed there during the Civil War when it was a Union prison. Two mysteries go on side by side, one that is told in the letters, and one in the present. Sounds like an intriguing device, but I found myself bored during the reading of the historic letters, and disoriented during much of the present day mystery as Anna has been given LSD, unknown to her. Thus I found myself drifting off to sleep during much of the book, and mostly was glad when it was finally over.
It takes place on Tortuga Island, off Key West, where there's apparently an old Civil War Fort and the National Park Service maintains it. Anna is subbing for a supervisor who's gone off the deep end, and has been sent some old letters written by an ancestor whose husband was stationed there during the Civil War when it was a Union prison. Two mysteries go on side by side, one that is told in the letters, and one in the present. Sounds like an intriguing device, but I found myself bored during the reading of the historic letters, and disoriented during much of the present day mystery as Anna has been given LSD, unknown to her. Thus I found myself drifting off to sleep during much of the book, and mostly was glad when it was finally over.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2024
A novel within a novel, I was totally immersed in both. The author is so good at describing the setting I felt like I was there.
August 10, 2016
I did not like this one at all. First I did not like double story line with the constant flipping back and forth between centuries and with the older one having been derived from some letters.
I find it hard to understand why a woman would leave her fiance for months at a time as well as her dearly beloved pets. And this time Anna is truly the most amazing of superwomen, never pausing to eat anything, never suffering from her numerous injuries or having any lasting effects. This was one ridiculous book!
I find it hard to understand why a woman would leave her fiance for months at a time as well as her dearly beloved pets. And this time Anna is truly the most amazing of superwomen, never pausing to eat anything, never suffering from her numerous injuries or having any lasting effects. This was one ridiculous book!
October 15, 2010
I enjoy the Anna Pigeon mysteries. This was my least favourite so far.
July 21, 2016
What to say? Anna Pigeon is a National Park Ranger who is stationed temporarily at Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys. While I suppose she is supposed to be just a human, Nevada Barr insists on her experiencing near death multiple times in one book. Every time I turn around she is in mortal danger, but somehow prevails. It gets a little too fantastic to believe. This book also has Anna reading post Civil War letters written from Dry Tortugas by her great aunt when the fort was used a prison for Confederates being held by the victorious Union. I got so tired of the every other chapter being about the great aunt and the present day Anna that about half way through the book I started reading every other chapter. First I finished the story about the great aunt. Then I went back to read the present day Anna versus the smugglers story. It made it more enjoyable to read two complete stories rather than having to continuously shift gears between the two disparate stories. But, still, sheesh, enough is enough of Anna the Great. I am tired of her.
May 10, 2016
I love the early Anna Pigeon mysteries by Nevada Barr (she's gotten too dark and gritty for my tastes with more recent additions). I recently returned to this one and enjoyed it as much as the first time I read it. Anna Pigeon is on temporary assignment to the Dry Tortugas National Park and quickly runs into trouble. Interwoven among the contemporary plotline is an historical thread, presented in the form of letters written by one of Anna's ancestors who lived at the fort there with her military husband, soon after the American Civil War. An enjoyable read.
March 1, 2020
Nevada Barr tried something new in this one and was, I think, ahead of her time in doing so. She combined a current story featuring her Park Ranger Anna Pigeon with an earlier story from Civil War times, both set in Dry Tortuga National Park. I got quite annoyed sometimes because as she alternated between time periods, she always left the reader with a blatant cliff-hanger, but eventually I saw the method in this madness (and both stories involve madness of various types.) Then I went with it and just enjoyed the mysteries in each tale.
November 16, 2022
I LOVE Nevada Barr. Just got some more at a book sale and I really enjoyed reading this one.
July 3, 2021
3.5 round it up.
Have you ever heard of Dry Tortugas National Park and Fort Jefferson? I hadn't until reading this book. Fort Jefferson was where Lincoln's assassination conspirators were imprisoned in 1865. Now it's a vacation destination run by the NPS.
This is only my second Anna Pigeon mystery, I have no problem reading them out of order. There are two stories here. One told in letter form by Anna's great-great-great aunt whose husband was stationed at the fort in 1865. The other is lived by Anna in real time during her temp service as a ranger in the park.
It was a real action adventure towards the end, a bit too violent for my taste so it lost half a star for that. Love the strong woman story lines and there is humor mixed in with the adventure which I always appreciate. The best part was how much I learned about the fort and its history.
July 4, 2019
I love the Anna Pigeon series. I think it’s because I love the National Park system and have been to many of the parks featured in these stories. Or maybe I missed my calling as a park ranger and live vicariously through Anna. 🤷♀️
Whichever it is, this was the first book in the series that I read a couple of years ago. It’s not the first in the series, but we had just been to the Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson on a diving vacation and I was intrigued. This one has a great storyline, and, in my opinion, is one of Barr’s best efforts (and they’re all pretty good). The dual storyline with the past and Anna’s Aunt Raffia was very well done.
Whichever it is, this was the first book in the series that I read a couple of years ago. It’s not the first in the series, but we had just been to the Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson on a diving vacation and I was intrigued. This one has a great storyline, and, in my opinion, is one of Barr’s best efforts (and they’re all pretty good). The dual storyline with the past and Anna’s Aunt Raffia was very well done.
December 18, 2021
This book was a chore to finish. Barr uses the current fad of parallel stories since neither story, even thought it is thin and padded, is enough for a book by itself. The strongest part of the novel was the description of the fort at Dry Tortuga National Park. The many weak spots include unbelievable characters, tedious dialogue and description, ridiculous situations in which the heroine places herself and somehow survives, and gratuitous violence as well as an occasional junior high sexual reference. I find it amazing that this main character is the star of a series of books. One adventure with her was far more than enough for me.
November 22, 2013
not one of my favorites in the series. The premise (Anna runs away from a marriage proposal to fill in on a remote Florida key where her ancester lived for a period of time. Anna's sister just happens to have all the lettersfrom this ancester) Anna eats nothing, sleeps no where, figures out she is being given LSD, escapes an explosion, escapes from under an engine block underwater, survives being shot at with an Uzi, and finally escapes from her office through an 8 inch wide window. I didn't like this edition to a series I do thoroughly like.
February 8, 2013
I didn't know of these tiny low islands 70 miles off the Florida Keys - fascinating!
At first I didn't like the jumping back and forth between Anna in the present and her great great grandmother in the past, but as the story wore on each chapter ended with a surprise or a cliffhanger, which makes you keep on reading. Several claustrophobic diving sections. Not my favourite of her books, but then, they're all worth a read.
At first I didn't like the jumping back and forth between Anna in the present and her great great grandmother in the past, but as the story wore on each chapter ended with a surprise or a cliffhanger, which makes you keep on reading. Several claustrophobic diving sections. Not my favourite of her books, but then, they're all worth a read.
December 24, 2015
Adding to the usual formula of Anna being sent to National Park (this time the Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park) and finding an adventure, this book also had a historical aspect and wove in the story of the incarceration of the Lincoln conspirators. The historical plot was a bit better but both stories were pretty interesting and the narration of the audio by Barbara Rosenblat was to her usual high standard.
October 14, 2009
My least favorite Anna Pigeon book so far. The historical flashbacks only annoyed me. I did not really see how they added to the modern plot.
May 15, 2011
Thus far, this has been my least favorite book in the Anna Pigeon series. The dual storyline didn't work for me, and I really had trouble getting into the story.
March 31, 2019
I enjoyed the concept and the location. Barr’s sentence structure drove me to distraction. I would have to read some sentences several times and I was still
Uncertain what she was trying to say.
Uncertain what she was trying to say.
July 29, 2025
Worst Anna Pigeon book so far 😭 It hurts to give this two stars but it was a slog. Jon and I started this on our road trip and we soon found out why it was nearly 16 hours long (as opposed to the previous book's 10 hours).
This book has two stories: one in present day and one in the post-civil war era in the same setting Anna's in, from the POV of her great-great-Aunt's letters. Each POV is a chapter and they switch every chapter. Hence the huge padding of time. And Lord this book NEEDED to be shorter. Not to mention each chapter ended on a damn cliff-hanger.
There's all this build-up with the great-great-Aunt's story, and it's dragged out to no end, and then when it concludes it's depressing as hell! Jon and I felt cheated that we stuck through all of it just to get this super sad conclusion.
Anna's POV was the only thing that made it worth finishing honestly. Of course we want to know our girl's okay. She almost died, like, 3 times, but she made it out alive as usual. There was a very unexpected illegal-alien-smuggling arc that was interesting I guess???? But goodness the build-up took AGES and at least two near-death experiences for Anna. OMG. I hope the next one is better 😭
This book has two stories: one in present day and one in the post-civil war era in the same setting Anna's in, from the POV of her great-great-Aunt's letters. Each POV is a chapter and they switch every chapter. Hence the huge padding of time. And Lord this book NEEDED to be shorter. Not to mention each chapter ended on a damn cliff-hanger.
There's all this build-up with the great-great-Aunt's story, and it's dragged out to no end, and then when it concludes it's depressing as hell! Jon and I felt cheated that we stuck through all of it just to get this super sad conclusion.
Anna's POV was the only thing that made it worth finishing honestly. Of course we want to know our girl's okay. She almost died, like, 3 times, but she made it out alive as usual. There was a very unexpected illegal-alien-smuggling arc that was interesting I guess???? But goodness the build-up took AGES and at least two near-death experiences for Anna. OMG. I hope the next one is better 😭
March 9, 2018
This book gives the reader two mysteries - one set in the immediate post Civil War years and one in the modern day - as well as a slew of interesting factual information on a little known part of the National Park System - the Dry Tortugas. The two mysteries are tied together by the setting and by the familial relationship between Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon and her great, great aunts who resided on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas post Civil War.
I found this book educational and entertaining and intend to read more books by this author who was a Park Ranger and whose powers of description do justice to the wonders of nature.
I found this book educational and entertaining and intend to read more books by this author who was a Park Ranger and whose powers of description do justice to the wonders of nature.
June 21, 2017
Downloaded this one on audible before we visited Dry Tortugas Nat'l Park, since the park is the setting for the story. This is my second listen of the Anna Pigeon series, maybe it's my love of National Parks that makes me tend to enjoy them but I look forward to more in my future.
Loved how Barr wove (is that a word?) extra history lessons in with the Lincoln conspirators being held at Fort Jefferson in the flashbacks.
Loved how Barr wove (is that a word?) extra history lessons in with the Lincoln conspirators being held at Fort Jefferson in the flashbacks.
January 10, 2020
I love this series! Book #11 is "flashing back" and forth from history via letters, and present time. Usually I enjoy this style of writing and get fully immersed in both stories. I had a difficult time getting invested and immersed in the letter side of this book-I'm not sure why? The present day side of the story however was so good! I always end propping my eyeballs open and reading to late when I get to the last 1/2 of a NB book---I must finish before sleeping 😅
August 19, 2020
Era un pezzo che non leggevo un libro di questa serie... E questo non mi ha soddisfatta del tutto. Ci sono due diversi misteri: uno avvenuto nel passato, nello stesso luogo, riguardante due antenate della protagonista, che non mi ha interessato molto; l'altro che coinvolge Anna, ma che ho capito ben presto dove andasse a parare. Per il resto, è sempre bello scoprire un nuovo parco americano.
July 19, 2017
Enjoyable read about one of my bucket list places, The Dry Tortugas. I know you can take the ferry from Key West for the day but I am trying to talk someone into camping there for two nights....anyone??
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