The sole survivor of a plane crash, seventy-two-year-old Cloris Waldrip finds herself lost and alone in the unforgiving wilderness of Montana's rugged Bitterroot Range, exposed to the elements with no tools beyond her wits and ingenuity. Intertwined with her narrative is the story of Debra Lewis, a park ranger struggling with addiction and a recent divorce who is galvanized by her mission to find and rescue Cloris.
[A] stirring debut ... riveting and surprising ... part intense adventure story, part morality tale ... Kingdomtide braids two narrative strands that cut like intersecting streams through the valley of this novel ... One of Kingdomtide's concerns is with the vagaries of desire, and Curtis doesn't stint on sometimes wince-inducing details that are not for the fastidious ... Curtis keeps us turning pages.
It's going to be darn hard not to love this book. It's amazing. Equally amazing is that someone so young could write it with such insight and understanding of the characters, one of them a 72-year-old woman. His depiction of her is wonderfully honest ... Some readers and reviewers have called this book weird, funny, and its characters quirky and oddball, but not so. They may look odd and act funny and swear a lot and drink too much, but they are as complex and full of goodness as the soul of mankind ... more than a book. It's an unforgettable experience. The author is an extraordinary writer whose books will surely be eagerly anticipated and welcomed with glee.Fans of Jess Montgomery, William Kent Krueger and Tim Johnston will be first in line at the bookstore for the next Rye Curtis novel.
... although Mr. Curtis again complicates the expected adventure-novel payoff, the truth is that Debra just isn’t interesting enough to justify the amount of ink used on her ... Or maybe she’s only uninteresting compared to Cloris, whose narration grows increasingly vulnerable, surprising and profound.
