The Signal

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. The dense Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming is where Carlson (_Five Skies_) sets his brooding latest, a tale of expired love and desperate measures. Mack, son of a longtime rancher, has made many missteps in life, culminating in a recent stint in jail where he'd rusted like an old post when the weather turned. While he's in jail, his recently ex-wife Vonnie agrees to join him one last time on their annual ritual of backpacking through the Wyoming wilderness to fish, camp and rediscover each other. Mack, though, has a hidden motive: a friend/technical genius has hired him to retrieve a valuable drone that's crash-landed in the forest. Carlson describes the couple's six days wandering the wooded terrain in delicate, measured prose, careful to miss neither the lush scenery nor the incrementally amplified tension as Mack edges closer to his prize and shady characters from the past appear. Carlson has produced a work of masterful fiction, combining the sad inevitability of a doomed relationship with sheer nail-biting suspense. (June) Copyright В© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review "The Signal takes us into terrain that's stunning and terrible. In doing so, it becomes both an elegy to a broken marriage and a heart- stopping, suspenseful thriller. It's a difficult journey, but relax: with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands." -_New York Times Book Review_ "Carlson never drops an extra word or a false phrase, even as "The Signal" accelerates like an avalanche, suspicion rolling into fear and then roaring down with a conclusion that shakes the ground. If men can't be brought back to fiction by books as fine as this one, it's their own damn fault." -_Washington Post_ "Ron Carlson's new novel is a love story and a wilderness adventure that mounts to a climax of shocking, and satisfying, violence...Carlson paces his tale with craft and care, never hurrying. "The Signal" is about broken innocence and how, for the individual at least, balance might be found again. Carlson's a romantic --- even when he's writing about failings, folly and violence. This novel...has a lingering elegance and power. Lives go wrong, "The Signal" says, but they can be repaired too, if we find our centers and attend to what's around us." -_Los Angeles Times_ "Read Ron Carlson's latest THE SIGNAL and you'll be convinced that the answer to your worries resides in the woods, in getting back to the basics... It's a sweet, tidy little book about a broken rancher. And yet it won't just help you pass the time, it will help you out." -_Esquire_ "Long revered as a master of the short story, Carlson has a talent for describing landscape (both internal and external), and that translates here intact. At fewer than 200 pages, its beach ready, too." -_GQ_ A beautifully written and suspenseful tale of love and peril by an award-winning writerBackpacking into the Wind River Mountains on their tenth annual trip, Mack and his wife, Vonnie, find the magnificent woods and stunning mountains of Wyoming full of ghosts and danger. Mack comes from a long line of ranchers, and his dedication to keeping the family land has led him into penury and a life of crime. Vonnie is a fiercely intelligent, headstrong girl who came west for love, only to have it stolen from her bit by bit.Theyve made this trip to say goodbye to each other, but as they navigate the trails they know so well, they come to understand the true nature of their wounds. And Mack has one more secret: he is trying to receive a signal and retrieve something that has fallen from the sky. It is a beacon that will lead them into a wood far darker than theyve ever imagined. Ron Carlsons love for the mountains and his mastery of fiction radiate in the pages of this thrilling, fast-paced love story. A rancher and his wife face a conflict over his actions to preserve his family land. What was planned as a final trip together causes them to see their marriage in a new light