cover image Mountains of the BlueStone

Mountains of the BlueStone

Dorothy Cave. Sunstone Press, $26.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-86534-272-9

While hunting alone and contemplating escape from a life he hates, Drake Cavanagh, a wealthy but disenchanted Albuquerque attorney, falls from a cliff trying to escape a mountain lion. His fall broken by a pinon tree, he is discovered by the residents of Descano, a remote mountain village whose inhabitants live partly in the modern world and partly in the mysterious past. Meanwhile, Cavanagh's fellow hunters arise from drunken slumber to find bloody evidence that he's dead. As Cavanagh's injuries heal, he's accepted into the culture of the village, with help from the fortune in cash he carried. Smitten by a young woman who may be a witch, he comes to an understanding of his place in the universe. Then he returns anonymously to Albuquerque to see what might have become of him in the life he left behind. Despite some fine description of the natural world and some amusing dialogue, Cave never achieves a convincing narrative. It's hard to find sympathy for a man worth millions who's thus far squandered his life; bucolic, half-ancient, half-modern Descano remains an unwieldy plot device; and the earnest final chapters read more like an essay than a fully realized novel. (Sept.)