At the center of the post office mural in Dawes, Wyo., artist Val Welch paints three "trackers," two Crow guides and a white explorer, symbolizing when "everything changed except landscape and weather." Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain; Varina) deftly paints a narrative of another change in The Trackers, chronicling the landscape of Depression-era America as Val himself traverses the country, unexpectedly becoming both tracker and tracked.
In 1937, Val's commission is part of the New Deal's WPA jobs program, a lucky break for the 27-year-old. A bonus is the offer from "rich art-lover" John Long and his enigmatic younger wife, Eve, to live at their ranch. As they share the lifestyle John's inheritance provides, Val ponders the couple's dichotomy: John has political ambitions, and Eve was a penniless itinerant before touring as a singer in western bands. Fascinated, Val also has "a feeling of something unsettled, something wrong."
When Eve disappears, John hires Val to find her, financing a search to "all four corners of the country." Eve's sketchy history draws Val into a trek of intrigue and danger, which includes Seattle Hoovervilles and Florida swampland. As he pursues Eve, he knows he's being followed. Solving the mysteries of why John is determined to find Eve and what she's fleeing leads the surprisingly wise painter into the worlds of colorful characters--Old-West cowboys, noir-ish urban squatters and small-town Americans. The Trackers is a fast-paced story with vivid images of both the landscape and society of 1930s America. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.