Wild Penance

Vivid and well-develped character in protagonist Jamaica Wild, a BLM resources protection agent who would just as soon go to work on horseback as her jeep. And in this book, which is actually a prequel to the previous 3 books in author Sandi Ault's series, she gets to do just that.  She is assigned by her boss to partner with a Forest Service ranger--her future lover, Kerry Reed--to patrol an area that has been vandalized by thieves cutting wood illegally. She has to camp out and ride at night as that is obviously when the culprits cut fences and drive in to harvest. One morning, while running along the canyon rim, she sees a van on the bridge over the Rio Grande. It stops. Two persons wrestle something out of the back, carry it to the edge, and drop it several hundred feet to the river below. The object they threw off the bridge is a giant cross, and there is a man tied to it. The cross, the stripped victim wearing only a loin cloth, and the black bag over the victim's head all suggest this was done by the Penitentes, a controversial group of Catholics who believe in purification through physically damaging self-punishment. At Easter, they re-enact the Crucifixion, and one of their members takes the place of Christ on the cross. But they never throw them in the river, and this man, who turns out to be a priest who has been studying the Penitentes, was dead before he was tied to the cross. Serendipitously, Jamaica has also been studying this group as she has come across several of their sacred places in off-the-beaten-path locations on BLM land. As Jamaica pursues answers to who the victim was, and why he was killed, someone is trying to kill her. This book also introduces the curandera, Esperanza, who will figure prominently in many of the other books as a spiritual guide and healer for Jamaica. At the very end of the book, when Jamaica is on leave to recover from a wound to her shoulder, we find out how she comes to be the adoptive mother of Mountain, the wolf pup. Highly recommended series for character, plot, setting, and learning about the culture of Native Americans. See also my posts for Wild Indigo, Wild Inferno, and Wild Sorrow.