The Alpine Yeoman

January 27, 2014
Emma Lord, publisher of the weekly newspaper in isolated Alpine, Wash., is enjoying life with her sexy new husband, Sheriff Milo Dodge, but must contend with a veritable avalanche of soap operas emanating from the 24 previous books in Daheim’s alphabetical cozy series, most recently 2013’s The Alpine Xanadu. A woman has a breakdown following the foiled jailbreak of her son; another copes with post-traumatic stress disorder after a shooting and the collapse of a marriage due to alcoholism; and that’s just chapter one. The main action involves a corpse found by a nearby river and such questions as who is he, why is a deputy missing, and why are high school girls disappearing? Following the various threads can be hard given the many characters, all with melodramatic backstories. The book’s strength is the often-amusing dialogue between Emma and Milo, as they navigate their public and private lives. Everyone else is a blur who needs therapy.