Picnic in the Ruins

By Todd Robert Petersen

Book Overview

Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards

"Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews

Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined.

What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1640093222
• ISBN13: 9781640093225
• Release Date: January 2021
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

An enjoyable read

Some may consider the events that connected the characters may be too coincidental, but that is the point of a novel like this. The story was intriguing, however I was more interested in the bigger questions the novel posed. Questions like "Who owns history?" "Who has the right to historical land and artifacts?" "Do humans really ruin everything?" The answer to that last question is yes, but I already knew that before reading. Lol. I would recommend reading, it shifted my understanding of National Parks, but was also a fun and adventurous read.