Baited - Colleen O'Brien

It’s 2004, the summer of Glacier Park’s grizzly bear DNA study. In the Cut Bank Valley, Clancy Dyer dashes through the aspen to roust her coworker Ezra, but instead she finds his shredded tent and a horrible smell. Ezra has disappeared.Meanwhile, District Ranger Mack Savage speeds toward the valley’s car campground in response to his rookie ranger’s report of unusual bear behavior. Mack has been dating Liz Ralston, the biologist conducting a groundbreaking DNA study. Saboteurs have wrenched her materials and she suspects both park personnel and a local climber. Frustrated with Mack’s inability to protect her study, Liz has hired a Blackfeet tribal member and local packer who she knows carries a pistol and a grudge. Meanwhile, she may not be above taking her own revenge. Set amidst Glacier’s fierce beauty, Baited grapples with grief, multiple suspicious deaths, differing beliefs surrounding the protection of Glacier’s grizzly bears, the park’s fraught relationship with the adjacent Blackfeet Reservation, and especially how to reconcile one’s love and affection for a person who has committed a reprehensible act. Told primarily from Clancy and Mack’s points of view but with some of the other characters taking center stage as needed, in particular the Native American stories that help shape the novel. The writing abounds with beautifully rendered passages and vivid thumbnail descriptions that make Glacier Park’s majestic wilderness a character in itself.