The Rope

Finished February 28
The Rope by Nevada Barr, performed by Joyce Bean
I've been listening to this one in the car and finished it off on my trip to work yesterday. I've liked this series from the beginning, but haven't done the last couple as the violence was getting too much for me. This one is less so, and takes us back to the beginning of Anna's career with the National Park Service with her first season as a seasonal ranger. The action takes place at Glen Canyon, and Anna is inadvertently drawn into a bad situation. Anna is still grieving the loss of her husband Zack, and takes the job wanting to get far away from the familiar and things that remind her of her life with Zack. When she sets off on a hike on her lieu day, she goes out unprepared for her trek. She regains consciousness at the bottom of a solution hole (a natural dry well) without her clothes or her pack and no memory of how she got there.
Meanwhile back at camp, her possessions have disappeared along with her and her fellow rangers suppose that she must have decided not to stick it and go home.
As Anna slowly regains pieces of her memory, she also struggles to survive. As Barr herself refers to in the text, portions of this book seem a bit "Perils of Pauline", but not overly so given the reality of the situation. The plot is a good one, and comes together nicely. And Anna herself is forced to make decisions and take actions that move her life forward and lead to her new career.
I find it interesting that this is the second book lately in a long-term series that has been a "go back and explain how this all started" book. The other one is The Affair by Lee Child, in the Jack Reacher series. I wonder if this is a new trend?