In my writeup of Peter Heller‘s The Last Ranger, I wrote
Heller’s gifts are in his descriptions of the natural world and in his explorations of alternate modes of contemporary masculinity, and both are on full display in The Last Ranger.
His 2017 novel, Celine, is mostly set among the National Parks of the Midwest, so the former is on full display. But the protagonist–a first for me in the four novels I’ve read by him (Dog Star was before Reading Well existed, The Painter was the first entry in the series, and my comments on The River are here)–is not a middle-aged man, wrestling with some fair bit of alienation, but rather a female senior citizen who occasionally needs oxygen for her emphysema.
She’s also a crack shot with any firearm she finds, and a registered PI, so there’s that. Still.
As in most of Heller’s work there are multiple things going on at once: here, an engaging, page-turner of a murder mystery sits alongside some wry and very sweet observations about aging and the possibilities of mature relationships, both romantic and familial, all set against Heller’s incomparable descriptions of nature and his clear love for the beauty of the American Midwest.
It feels like Heller could have developed an entire franchise around Celine and her adventures, but as far as I know he has refrained from doing so. I’d read more of her adventures, for sure.