Friday Memes: Light on Bone by Kathryn Lasky

 Happy Friday!

Book Beginnings is hosted by Gillion at Rose City Reader. She asks that the first sentence is posted along with the author and title of the book and the reader's initial thoughts on the sentence, the book, or anything else it inspires. 

Carrie at Reading Is My Superpower.org also provides a linky for sharing first lines and connecting with others. This meme asks that the chosen books be PG or marked as Mature if they are not. 

The Friday 56 was hosted by Freda at Freda's Voice. This meme is currently on hiatus but many of us are still including a sentence from page 56 or from 56% of the ebook. Anne @ Head Full of Books is picking up the slack until Freda is ready to return. I think this link will get you to the correct place. 

Beginning:

The damn cassock was really a nuisance. Even worse, he was almost out of gas after becoming hopelessly lost in this desert country. And these roads, gouged with arroyos from the violent summer downpours, made driving almost impossible.

Friday 56:

"True, but it doesn't need my prints in the mix. You found it out there, near where the body was? How near?"

"Ten feet or so."

This week I am spotlighting a relatively new arrival on TBR mountain. Light on Bone by Kathryn Lasky is the first in the Georgia O'Keeffe mysteries. Since the audiobook was available through Audible Plus, I decided to listen to this one. 

Here is the description from Amazon:

Kathryn Lasky has written an exciting new adult amateur sleuth mystery set in New Mexico in the 1930s.

The sleuth is Georgia O'Keefe, who actually did suffer a nervous breakdown in 1933 when her husband Alfred Stieglitz had a somewhat public affair, was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, and then traveled to the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico to paint. O'Keefe was approaching the peak of her fame and success, having just sold a painting for a record price. The narrative begins when she discovers the slain body of a priest in the desert. The plot includes several other murders, Georgia's burgeoning romance with the local sheriff, an international espionage plot involving Charles Lindbergh (who is staying at the ranch with his wife Anne), and lots of intricate twists and turns leading to a thoroughly unforeseen denouement.

The strength of this story is how Lasky's elegant writing captures the emotional depth of this artist's turmoil and so stunningly reveals O'Keeffe's perception of the landscape that moves her to paint. It is not simply a whodunnit mystery, but much more: It is a narrative of healing and resurrection of spirit.