Ash Child [Hardcover]

Author Peter Bowen uses a powerful and distinctive voice to describe the lives of the Metis Indians and the ranchers who survive in the harsh lands of Montana. Du Pre relies on a combination of bull-headed bravery, investigating, and Native American magic to learn the truth. In Bowen's novels, the magic is real, and the result is often close to magic itself.

With its wealth of intriguing characters and its vivid descriptions of the land and people of Montana, ASH CHILD is a fine and compelling novel. I would have liked to see a stronger connection between the drug angle and the rest of the mystery, but it is hard to quibble with Bowen's work.

Bowen's central characters are Gabriel Du Pre and Madelaine Placquemines, Metis (people of mixed Native American and European ancestory) living in "Toussaint" in central Montana. Gabriel has no visible means of support (we are told he used to be a brand inspector) and Madelaine works in the local bar. Bowen says he chose to use Metis because "the Metis are a great people, a wonderful people, and not many Americans know anything about them." Unfortunately Ash Child does little to alleviate that deficiency apart from rendering the dialogue of Gabriel and Madelaine into dialect. The reader learns nothing about the history or culture of Metis -- unless one assunes they all subsist on a diet of bourbon ditches and "pink fizzy wine" like Gabriel and Madelaine.

In Ash Child, Montana is beset by a disastrous summer of forest fires (as in 2000), a raging Methamphetamine epidemic and a rash of murders. Bowen's pair of unlikely Metis sleuths tackle all three problems with some help from a mysterious shaman named Benetsee who communicates with the "old ones" and has the power to make fire do his bidding. Perhaps one shouldn't expect a logical plot in such a setting, but it takes more than supernatural manifestations to explain away all the loose threads in this story.

There are some traces of real gold amid the clinkers -- vivid word-pictures and arresting phrases. Example: calling the thick ash on a burnt-over hillside "the shadow of the fire". Bowen slips obscure bits of western Americana, almost like inside jokes, into his story. i.e. the Democrat wagon and using the name of a priest who was important in 19th Century central Montana for Touissant's current priest. At the same time he embraces some of the tinniest myths of Rocky Mountain libertarianism. to wit: Local ranchers and cowboys know more about fighting wild fire than the US Forest Service; vigilante justice is better than court-administered justice; millionaire ranchers are the protectors of the less fortunate citizens in their communities against the highhanded behavior of federal bureaucrats.