Rebecca Rothenberg was a Renaissance woman, a musician and composer (of country and western ballads), and epidemiologist, an amateur botanist and a talented writer of intelligent and compelling mysteries set in the San Joaquin Valley. Three of her botany-themed novels, narrated by continuing heroine Claire Sharples, a very human plant pathologist transplanted to Kern County from New England, were published before the author's untimely death in 1998 (the result of a brain tumor). A planned but not finished Book Four has now been completed by her friend Taffy Cannon, another accomplished writer with a penchant for plant life ("Guns and Roses"). The result is "The Tumbleweed Murders" (John Daniel and Company/Perseverance Press, $12.95, 240 pages), a seamless tale of danger, adventure and romance spanning five decades of Southern and Central California life and lifestyles.
Like Rothenberg's acclaimed debut novel, "The Bulrush Murders," it begins wit a peach-blight investigation. In the earlier work, the rotted fruit led to multiple murders and unlawful land development. "Tumbleweed" finds Sharples digging into a century-old crime and the connection it may have to a new death and an oil-and-cotton fiefdom.
It's a particularly strong and well-conceived plot. There are shrewdly observed descriptions of the country along the Kern River, the locales as well as the locals. ("The Oklahoma in her voice had been as ruthlessly suppressed as her original hair color, but in both cases the roots showed a little.") There's also an ingratiating mixture of history and folklore, with an emphasis on the area's country music scene. And last, but certainly not least, there's the portrait of Sharples, strong but vulnerable, shy but passionate, self-reliant but lonely, an outsider finally starting to grow accustomed to her surroundings.
Dick Lochte
September 30, 2001
The Los Angeles Times
Back to The Tumbleweed Murders
Back to Perseverance Press New and Recent Books
Back to Perseverance Press Forthcoming Books
