A scene of note: as plans to "go get" those outlaws on the mountain are laid, Strickland calls a press conference/public forum to justify her plans and her planned actions to anyone who cares to know. The scene rings as true as any I've ever read in modern literature, and is almost painfully funny as Saddlestring residents complain about having no say in forest policy, local rangers tapdance around the issue, audience members share their pained ironic takes in sotto voce and everyone is told, finally, to just shut up because it's going to be Strickland's Way or nothing.

Medicine Bow National Forest's draft management plan, anyone?

Political/resource issues aside, this is also another chapter in the story of the life of Joe Pickett's family, which has already faced its share of tragedy - an unborn son killed when his wife is shot in the first book, the loss of a beloved horse in the second - and in Winterkill must deal with more as the Pickett's foster daughter April (Box also has a wonderful gift for writing child characters) is kidnapped and put directly in harm's way by her deranged mother, holed up on the mountain with the "federal government-hating outlaws."

An intriguing new character is introduced, too, in the person of Nate Romanowski, a falconer and true individualist who undergoes a surprising metamorphosis - not in himself, but in the perceptions of him induced in the reader. It's high time Joe had a sidekick - and what a sidekick - and I would enthusiastically nominate Romanowski for this role. More, please.

And so I wait, along with the rest of Box's growing readership, to see what he's going to come up with next. There are many other intriguing issues in which Joe could find himself entangled. Hint: our favorite saying around southern Wyoming and the town that is one of the three** on which Box based his fictitious Saddlestring: "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting."

* Probably an occupational hazard: I would expect no less from a guy who still makes his actual living marketing trips to Wyoming to European Tourists. Box is the founder and CEO of Rocky Mountain International. Scenery porn is an indispensable tool of that trade.

** I'm only sure of two of the three: Sheridan, Wyoming and my hometown, Saratoga (mentioned as an aside in Winterkill for its annual ice fishing derby, which Box once ran when he was the chamber of commerce director here. Thanks for the plug, buddy!).