The Bone Trail

The Bone Trail

By Nell Walton

Soft Cover, 2010, $13.95

ISBN: 978-1-45649-90799

Available from Amazon

Reviewed by Carol M. Upton

First published in Horses All: www.horsesall.com

On the afternoon of the last day of Lindy Abraham’s life, she stood leaning against an old Jeep Cherokee, once red, now faded to kind of a dusky umber, rapping her heel impatiently against a tire. She waited in the Nevada desert in the middle of June; it was hot, and her peach colored cotton tank top stuck unpleasantly in the hollow between her narrow shoulders. ~ Nell Walton

In The Bone Trail, Nell Walton hooks the reader from the very start. We can feel the unrelenting heat and isolation of the desert, and the vulnerability of those who venture there. I was immediately drawn into this exciting story about the disappearance of two wild horse advocates – mystery, thriller and romance all rolled into one.

Walton’s book is inspired by the true-life events with which many horse lovers are familiar – the brutal helicopter roundups of wild mustangs off U.S. public lands, hearing of them being run to exhaustion into long-term warehousing facilities, where many face illness and death. But, there is more to this story, something far worse, and investigative journalist Kate Wyndham is determined to the discover the truth, even at great personal risk.

Every single character in this novel is lively and engaging – from the cold-blooded mining security staff to the Shoshone Reservation inhabitants to the stonewalling local police. Before we know it, we are following Kate’s terrifying trail, gripped with fear and sickened by the possible outcome.

This is one of those books the reader hopes will never end. Rumor has it that Walton is working on a sequel and there is no doubt readers will be lined up to get their hands on it.

Nell Walton is a journalist and the founder of the online equestrian news magazine, The AllHorses Post (www.allpetspost.org/allhorsespost). She lives with her husband and four horses (including two mustangs) in East Tennessee.