The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook
I just picked this up at the library sale. It just barely squeaks in the chunkster category at 451 pages. It's a little bit of historical fiction, Southwest literature, and mystery all wrapped in to one. It's a multi-generational story beginning with Bassie, Meg's grandmother, and Meg going to New Mexico to follow up on a new find at an archaeological site with which Bassie's family is intimately involved. Bassie's life work as an anthropologist has been to edit and publish her mother's (Meg's great-grandmother's) diaries of early settler life at the Pecos Pueblo. During the dig, ostensibly for the bones of Hannah's dog (Hannah being the author of the diaries) a human corpse is found which turns out to be Hannah's husband, Elliott Bass. He is a well-known railroad surveyor, responsible for laying thousands of miles of track in the American west and Mexico. This creates quite a mystery as Elliott was always thought to have disappeared in Mexico and his body never found. It also creates a crisis for both Bassie and Meg and Bassie subsequently dies leaving the real mystery to be unravelled by Meg. Hannah's diaries are interspersed with the present day so the two time periods are interwoven. There's many other facets to the story and a good deal of family dynamics but I will leave that to the readers to uncover for themselves. I found the book entertaining and the mystery draws the reader in an keeps them turning the pages. I also found the location and history of the southwest interesting. Overall, a good read but not especially difficult.
