Flashback [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Nevada Barr (Author), Barbara Rosenblat (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2003

Running from a proposal of marriage from Sheriff Paul Davidson, Anna Pigeon takes a post as a temporary supervisory ranger on remote Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, a small grouping of tiny islands in a natural harbor seventy miles off Key West. This island paradise has secrets it would keep; not just in the present, but in shadows from its gritty past, when it served as a prison for the Lincoln conspirators during and after the Civil War. Here, on this last lick of the United States, in a giant crumbling fortress, Anna has little company except for an occasional sunburned tourist or unruly shrimper. When her sister, Molly, sends her a packet of letters from her great-great-aunt who lived at the fort with her husband, a career soldier, Anna's fantasy life is filled with visions of this long-ago time. When a mysterious boat explosion - and the discovery of unidentifiable body parts - keeps her anchored to the present, Anna finds crimes of past and present closing in on her. A tangled web that was woven before she arrived begins to threaten her sanity and her life. Cut off from the mainland by miles of water, poor phone service, and sketchy radio contact, and aided by one law-enforcement ranger, Anna must find answers or weather a storm to rival the hurricanes for which the islands are famous.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When it comes to a vibrant sense of place, Barr has few equals, as deliciously demonstrated in her 11th Anna Pigeon novel (after 2002's Hunting Season), set in little-known Dry Tortugas National Park, 70 miles off Key West in the Gulf of Mexico. Anna takes up her new post on Garden Key, home to Fort Jefferson, a notorious Union prison during the Civil War, after fleeing a marriage proposal from just-divorced Sheriff Paul Davidson. As she goes about her duties, Anna quickly becomes ensnared in one life-threatening situation after another. Anna's fans expect no less; all her postings somehow turn dangerous. Indeed, the contrast between the natural beauty of the landscapes and the human evils within them is a recurring theme. But this one has an added twist: a mystery concerning alleged Lincoln assassination conspirator Dr. Samuel Mudd interweaves with current crimes. In a coincidence best left unscrutinized, Anna's great-great-great-aunt was the wife of the fort's commanding officer, and her letters, relating a story of intrigue and murder, have surfaced. The two stories are told in alternating chapters, and only Barr's skill keeps this familiar device fresh. The pitch-perfect 19th-century phrasing in the letters makes it easy to forgive the occasional over-the-top prose in the modern scenes. But this is a quibble. Those who already admire the doughty National Park ranger will rejoice in this double-layered story with its remarkable setting, passionately rendered; new readers have a treat in store.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

When Anna Pigeon flees a marriage proposal for ranger service on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, she finds that the past (the island was once a prison) and the present (an exploding boat scatters unidentified body parts) are eerily conjoined.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Recorded Books; Unabridged edition (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140254197X
• ISBN-13: 978-1402541971
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 7.1 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,372,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nevada was born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras. Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir.
Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN. For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio. During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers -- Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi.
Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word. Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic. Her first novel, Bitterweet was published in 1983. The Anna Pigeon series, featuring a female park ranger as the protagonist, started when she married her love of writing with her love of the wilderness, the summer she worked in west Texas. The first book, Track of the Cat, was brought to light in 1993 and won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. The series was well received and A Superior Death, loosely based on Nevada's experiences as a boat patrol ranger on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, was published in 1994. In 1995 Ill Wind came out. It was set in Mesa Verde, Colorado where Nevada worked as a law enforcement ranger for two seasons.
The rest is, shall we say, HISTORY! Nevada's books and accomplishments have become numerous and the presses continue to roll, so in the interest of NOT having to update this page, books, awards, status on the New York Times Best Seller List -- and more -- will be enumerated with the relevant books else where on this website.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Reluctant Four Stars, March 19, 2003

By 

Tucker Andersen (Wall Street) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flashback (Hardcover)

I recently began reading Nevada Barr's books featuring Ranger Anna Pigeon at the suggestion of my daughter, her husband (they have both been rangers in the National Park Service) and my wife, all of whom have enjoyed the series. I enjoyed HUNTING SEASON enough that I decided to read FLASHBACK, and as my review will make clear my reactions to the book were very ambivalent. The book involves Anna's decision to accept a temporary post at Dry Tortugas National Park located near Garden Key off the coast of Florida. We actually attended a talk and book signing for Nevada Barr recently; she revealed that the location for this story had been suggested to her by three different readers during a previous book tour. Thus, if you have any suggestions for her, I recommend that you locate the nearest stop on her current tour and feel confident that she will listen carefully to you.

Dry Tortugas Park consists primarily of Fort Wadsworth, a military fortress constructed prior to the civil war but utilized instead as a Union prison for reasons explained in the novel. In addition to Confederate Civil war prisoners, the Lincoln Conspirators were imprisoned there, and this fact is an integral part of the story. Anna is temporarily replacing the previous superintendent of the facility, who has been institutionalized after seeing apparitions and apparently suffering a nervous breakdown. Shortly after assuming her post, Anna begins to delve into the Fort's history through reading the letters of her great-great aunt Raffia, who lived at the Fort during the civil war while her husband was the military commandant of the prison. Two parallel mysteries unfold and need to be solved, one involving some mysterious events and disappearances described in the letters and one involving present day events. The unexplained explosion of a mysterious cigar boat in the waters near the Fort and accompanying loss of life lead to a series of incidents that endanger Anna and cause her to question her own sanity. Thus she is distracted from what she hoped would be a quiet assignment during which she could resolve her indecision about the proposal of marriage which she recently received from sheriff and ex-priest Paul Davidson. Additional complexities eventually develop, including the real motivations of Anna's coworkers; given the closed and isolated nature of the post she suspects that recent deaths, disappearances and apparently illegal activities must involve the complicity of someone stationed at the Fort.

This is a very well plotted mystery, and the conclusion is very satisfying (altough a little contrived) as Anna unravels the threads of both the present day events and also finds a soluion to the unexplained occurrences outlined in Raffia's letters. There are some really interesting characters, and their interaction with Anna is a joy at times. In addition, there are some observations that really ring true and are articulated quite enjoyably, for instance:

Anna mirrored my own frustration at times when she kept exchanging messages with a law enforcemant officer on the mainland and observed "it seemed with each new invention developed to make communication easier- call waiting, forwarding, voicemail, pagers, cell phones - the more dificult it became to get in touch with anyone"

or tourists at the Fort "made the place mundane,{robbing it} of mystery and romance".

And what a great personal insight, "of the various neuroses, the one she most lusted after was the one that she could never quite attain".

Finally what a wonderful reply by Paul to her indecision concerning his marriage proposal and her question about its duration. "It will stand forever. Maybe lean a little after eight hundred years like the Tower of Pisa, but it will still be standing."

So, why did I only reluctantly rate this book as high four stars, and not a glowing five stars? I found that the technique which the author used to weave the two stories together significantly inhibited my enjoyment. Anna's adventures are interspersed in alternate chapters with the letters of Raffia, which relate the events during the Civil War. Furthermore, many of the chapters end in the midst of very tense situations, while this seems somewhat natural in the case of the letters it seems totally contrived in Anna's situation. Thus, I found it very easy to put the book down since I knew the next chapter provided no continuity with what I had just read. This is just the opposite of what I expect from a good mystery, where I want to get so involved that I stay up late to keep reading. I was tempted to sometimes just skip ahead, but was never sure whether I would lose context by so doing. So I found the effort by the author interesting and credit her with the attempt to do something new, but in the end I found it unsatisfying and while it was intellectually interesting it detracted from my enjoyment of the story. And from both other reviews and the reaction of my wife and friends, I realize that my feelings are quite widely shared. So I recommend the book, but with the caveat that you should be prepared for this very unusual literary technique.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Rebound for Barr!, March 24, 2003

By 

Wendy Kaplan (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flashback (Hardcover)

Don't let the slow beginning fool you. "Flashback" is the best Nevada Barr book since "Deep South." This time around, Anna, sans dog and erstwhile fiancee Paul, is stationed for a brief time on the Dry Tortugas--the southernmost point of the Florida Keys, and therefore of the United States.

It should be a quiet, sleepy respite for Anna, who is filling in for the regular ranger--a man who has gone inexplicably mad. But then--where Anna goes, trouble follows, and this outing is no exception. In very short order, Anna, too, begins to fear she is losing her mind. There are ghosts that appear and disappear, flashing lights that cannot be, noises that may or may not be real, and the reality of the spooky Civil War fort that makes up the national park may just serve to take Anna's sanity away for good.

Told against this very interesting backdrop is another story entirely--that of Anna's ancestor Raffia Coleman, wife of the Civil War Union commander of the fort, which in those days housed Confederate prisoners, not the least of whom was the notorious Dr. Mudd, accused of helping to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Through a series of letters written by Raffia (and sent to Anna by her sister Molly), a dark and brooding mystery unfolds. Although this device has been used by other others, most notably by Anita Shreve (in "The Color of Water"), it in no way detracts from the interesting juxtaposition between Civil War times and the all-too-frightening present.

As Anna hallucinates between dreams of her great great aunt's letters and the strange goings-on of the present, the reader becomes rivited. When Barr is on, she is really on--and this book proves the point. A tragic murder of the past, and a deeping mystering of the present all entertwine to make Anna struggle for her wits and her sanity.

A good, solid yarn. Welcome back, Nevada Barr and Anna!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars two mysteries add to atmosphere, February 20, 2003

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Flashback (Hardcover)

Before accepting a temporary supervisor's job at the Dry Tortugas National Park, an island 70 miles off Key West, park ranger Anna Pigeon had never heard of the place. Though most of the park is under water, the above-ground part is covered by Fort Jefferson, a brick behemoth built during the Civil War and obsolete before it was finished. The diving is fabulous, but after two weeks Anna is ready for something else to distract her from thinking about wedlock (fans will remember Sheriff Paul Davidson). She's beginning to understand how her predecessor went mad after his girlfriend left him.

Then her sister sends a box of letters from her great-great-aunt, Raffia, wife of Fort Jefferson's commanding officer in 1865, by which time the fort was a military prison, full of deserters and rebel prisoners. That same night Anna's second-in-command, a spit and polish type, goes missing on patrol. And the story - both stories - told in alternating, cliff-hanger chapters, takes off.

Raffia's story involves her 16-year-old sister, a handsome rebel soldier brutalized by a thuggish sergeant, and the arrival of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, including Dr. Samuel Mudd, who proclaims himself innocent of anything except setting the assassin's leg. Intrigue and collusion are in the charged air and a young girl's romanticism can get people killed. Barr brings the original fort to teeming life through the lonely, compassionate eyes and tart voice of a woman isolated in an uncommunicative army marriage.

The present-day story involves a number of breathtaking near-death experiences for Anna, as well as spectacular dives and dogged detective work piecing together a tangled (but not totally surprising) modern conspiracy which culminates in a gorgeously over-the-top finale. The parallel tale-telling works well to entangle the two though it can be maddening leaving Anna trapped at the bottom of the ocean with her air hose just out of reach....

But, as always, Barr's ("Hunting Season," "Firestorm") evocation of the natural setting (and the human menace) is vivid and the action scenes are among her best.