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Summary
Summary
Sally Alder is a couple of ears past her wild youth as the hard-drinking, guitar playing, hell-raising singer known as Mustang Sally. But then she's grown with age, She's wiser and more coolheaded now, and, more important, Sally has learned how to keep a secret. It's a good thing, too, because she's going to need every advantage she's gained in order to handle the job she's just taken.
Imagine having to move from LA to Laramie to get a thrill.
A professor of history at UCLA, Sally has just been offered the hugely endowed and deliciously secretive Dunwoodie Distinguished Chair in American Women's History at the University of Wyoming. Job description: Move into the late Meg Dunwoodie's posh residence in Laramie (the only one of its kind) and, with sole proprietors of her papers, construct the definitive Meg Dunwoodie biography--without telling anyone anything about it.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As much a mainstream story of two gutsy Wyoming women as it is a mystery, Swift's first novel captivates. Meg Dunwoodie, a newspaperwoman well known for her tough, incisive political reporting, returned to her native Wyoming from Europe just as WWII broke out and never left home again. Like Emily Dickinson, she became famous for her poetry only after her death. Now her estate has endowed a chair in American women's history at the University of Wyoming. History professor Sally Alder is appointed to the professorship on the condition that she live in Meg's house in Laramie and write the poet's biography. Sally, who was locally famous as a "hell-raising" bar singer 20 years earlier and is struggling with changes in her life, returns to Wyoming to begin to uncover the truth about Meg's past. But someone keeps breaking into the house, perhaps to look for the cache of Krugerrands that are the stuff of local legend. Unknown parties paint Sally's car with swastikas, while strangers in camouflage gear descend on the town during a blizzard. Skinheads, neo-Nazis, professors, lawmen, barmaids and others with secrets of their own converge as Sally unravels Meg's story, discovering why the woman buried herself in smalltown America after living the life of a European sophisticate. Swift develops her engaging tale gracefully, with a real feel for the atmosphere of its Wyoming setting. Agent, Elaine Koster. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A soaring debut from Swift, who combines a bittersweet romance, resumed after a 20-year hiatus, with academic infighting, paramilitary paranoia, and a puzzle dating back to WWII. After several decades away, Sally Alder returns to Laramie, Wyoming, to assume the newly established Dunwoodie Distinguished Chair in American Women's History, endowed by the late poet Margaret Dunwoodie. While sorting through the detritus of Meg Dunwoodie's life, Sally uncovers a cache of unpublished poems, a stash of museum-quality diamonds, and hints that Ernst Malthus, Meg's wartime lover, may have been spying for the Nazis, or the English, or the Americans. Meanwhile, a local skinhead who feels entitled to a share of Meg's fortune plants a dead cat in Sally's yard, cuts her brake line, and informs the Unknown Soldiers, a group of misfits funded by crazy billionaire Elroy Foote, that Krugerrands are hidden on Dunwoodie property. Trying to wrest control of the Dunwoodie millions from Sally, Foote and his minions, along with the obligatory malcontents in the university's history department, start suit to bring the Dunwoodie chair, archives, and monies under their auspices, and, of course, have Sally fired. The ATF and FBI converge on Foote's compound in a scene reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, and Sally and Hawk, her college sweetheart, sort through the betrayals that touched Meg's life and theirs. Swift makes you believe in second chances, in lifelong friendships and love, and she is spot-on in her portrayal of small-town gossip and small-minded academics. It's inspiring to drink in her passionate view of middle age and her insistence that one's character outlasts one's youth and indiscretions.
Library Journal Review
Forty-five-year-old Sally Alder (a.k.a. Mustang Sally, country singer), Ph.D., has just been appointed to a distinguished professorship in women's history at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. As she begins sorting through the archives of the secretive Margaret Dunwoodie, Wyoming's most distinguished poet, she digs up questions that span most of the 20th century. How did Margaret amass a fortune? Why are skinheads breaking into Margaret's historic house and trashing Sally's car? Sally uncovers an amazing range of clues, including uncut diamonds, French Resistance fighters, and secret assassination plots--all the while contending with a militia run by a reactionary millionaire, sleazebags, good old boys, and antifeminist faculty. The delightfully heterogeneous cast of characters includes ex-doper Sheriff Dickie Langham, formidable housekeeper extraordinaire Maude Stark, and ponytailed geology professor Hawk Green, once Sally's lover. This witty, warm, engrossing first novel is highly recommended for larger fiction and mystery collections.--Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.