Old Enemies

Old Enemies

Janet LaPierre

In the very northeastern corner of California - high desert country where cows outnumber people by about six to one and where the same families have been ranching for more than a hundred years - an important anniversary is at hand. Soon it will be ten years since Bobby Macrae, twenty-one-year-old scion of one of Modoc County's pioneer families, disappeared. He was there, and then he was gone. For ten years, nobody has seen Bobby or heard from him. But there's a rumor that after a decade away, he might come home. Forty-something Meg Halloran, on the summer-vacation road in search of a change of scene and a renewed connection with her teenaged daughter, Katy, has heard vaguely of Bobby's strange, unexplained disappearance, but not of its almost mythic importance to the citizens of Stony Creek and the surrounding countryside. Schoolteacher Meg has kept in sporadic touch with her former student, Bobby's sister Lauren Macrae Cavalier; but only when Meg and Katy reach the Macrae ranch for a visit does Meg discover how Bobby's loss has eroded the lives of Lauren and of Frances Macrae, the aunt who had raised the brother and sister. Katy thinks a vanished relative is exciting, but her current passion is Canis lupus, the gray wolf, and she knows a lot more about wolf pack hierarchy than about the human version. When old feuds erupt and another disappearance is followed by murder, both Meg and Katy find that survival depends on learning to distinguish the misfit - the omega animal - from the true outlaw.