All Around Me Peaceful — Kent Nelson

A marvelous novel filled with the beauties and hardships of life in the West

For two years Neil Shanks has been living in Gold Hill, Colorado, putting off the moment when he must return to the family lumber business in Michigan -- a business built from the fortune his great-grandfather mysteriously made over a century earlier. Driven by a hunch that it was a fortune founded on shame, young Shanks searches Gold Hill's town records and collective memory, seeking clues to family secrets.

But then suddenly it's hunting season, and Neil's friend, Becky Carlsson, fails to keep a rendezvous with her braggart husband, Finn, at their mountain campsite. With her disappearance, the rumors about what might have happened -- between husband and wife or between Becky and Neil -- start swirling around town. And as Saturday turns into Sunday, nobody in the rescue effort has to be reminded of the odds against survival.

All Around Me Peaceful celebrates but never sentimentalizes the men and women who choose to live in this land of plenty, whose stunning beauty and abundance is matched only by the mysteries lurking at its heart.