A European woman becomes enmeshed in the lives of a Wyoming Arapaho family in Birkmyer’s debut novel.

In 1988, German immigrant Heidi Vogel drives away from New York City, her husband, and the restaurant they own. She’s felt rootless since the death of her infant son, Peter, two years earlier, and now she’s headed west, looking for—in the words of her cousin—“something divine.” She ends up in Riverton, Wyoming, where she takes a job at a soup kitchen and settles into a simple life. A few years later, she meets Nara Crow, a spirited but enigmatic Arapaho woman who applies for a position at the kitchen. She’s pregnant with twins, and she ends up moving in with Heidi and her dog, Gering; she continues to live there after the babies, Amadeus and Marcel, are born. Then, without warning, she suddenly takes the boys and disappears. Four years later, Heidi gets a call from Wyoming Highway Patrol; there’s been a car accident, and a woman is unconscious at the hospital. Two 5-year-olds were in the car, and one had Heidi’s name and number written on their arm. The woman is Nara, the children are hers, and Marcel now identifies as Marcela. The youngsters now need someone to look after them. Can Heidi be the “aunt” that they require? Birkmyer’s prose is wonderfully voiced and imaginatively detailed, and it also displays a great deal of control, as in this passage considering Heidi’s single status: “there were slim pickins in Riverton. The guy who owned the deli sniffed around; the head of the Chamber of Commerce had made a move. Heidi had finally made up a boyfriend, a paleontologist in Thermopolis, who was often away for months digging up fossils.” However, the book treads rather clumsily into a White savior narrative that may remind some readers of the odd phenomenon of Deutsche Indianertümelei, or “German Indian Enthusiasm,” which romanticizes the Native American experience. Despite this, the characters are all well drawn, and readers will still find themselves pulled into the emotion of the story.

An often well-crafted novel of grief and redemption that sometimes leans on problematic tropes.