The Salt Maiden: Colleen Thompson

Deep beneath the desert lies a woman's body, mummified by salt, abandoned by those who ought to seek her. With her rests a secret that someone will keep to keep buried.

It's a barren wasteland, the dead center of nowhere, and the last place Dana Vanover wants to be. But it's also the last known address of her missing sister. Determined to locate Angie, Dana won't be deterred by suspicious rednecks, snakebite, or even the grim prognosis of Sheriff Jay Eversole: no woman would survive more than a week alone in the burning heat of Rimrock County. But the endless sands aren't the only thing hotter than the chili served up in the Broken Spur cafe. Despite small-town dirty politics, a deadly car chase and a dangerous paternity search, Dana and Jay can't keep their hands off each other. In the least populated area of the country they've managed to find love. Now all they have to do is stay alive long enough to uncover...the salt maiden.

A spoiled rich girl drives her convertible into the barren wasteland of a desert to find her crazy, drug-addicted sister who may be the genetic match for a bone marrow transplant in a little girl dying of cancer. Meanwhile a lovesick and mental sheriff pretends that life is okay after dealing with post traumatic stress from the horrors of war. She sees white picket fences torn away with the loss of her womb while he sees visions of bodies blown apart by masses of terrorists. This must be a match made in heaven!

It takes under one hundred pages for the damaged goods to do the horizontal bump and grind all the while the family feud in this small desolate town continues on full force, snakebites and shootings be damned for a good fucking. The "Hunter" must simply have really bad aim and I find the term more of a bad punch line than a real attempt at a mysterious villain. As in Head On, I find the chosen terminology distracting if nothing else but I will give the author credit where it is due. I did find the ending a bit of a twist but I should have seen it coming considering the continuous repetition of the impossible.

The love affair was out of place, the sob story of a little girl dying of cancer made my eye twitch for it was nothing more than an excuse to make the story fit together and the shallow characters left me unimpressed. This is one of those stories that makes you blink several times to try to figure out if there are any other forms of drama that can be crammed into three hundred pages or if there are other flaws to the characters to be added.

It only took me three quarters of the book to finally begin to enjoy the webs that were weaved to realize that, okay, Thompson can write. With a bit of refinement I may very well add her to my favorite author's list. She has attempted to make me forgive her for the redneck tale of Head On.

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Publisher: Leisure (November 27, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0843960175
ISBN-13: 978-0843960174