SINGING GRASS

Clinical psychologist Evans’ psychological suspense novel delves into the traumatic impact of White expansion into the American West.

New Zealand–born Richard Young “would never say he was born to be a psychotherapist, but he knew he was very good at it.” After leaving a career in academia under initially mysterious circumstances,Richard maintained a private therapy practice in Taos, New Mexico. He’s married to an artist, Sharon Davis, who has a love of Native American art and a fear of being accused of cultural appropriation in her own work. The two live a relatively peaceful life in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. This changes when Christopher Carson arrives for his first therapy session, clearly in crisis. He happens to share the name of the frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson, a local hero of sorts: “Heck,” declares Richard, “there’s even a street and a park named after him and a museum dedicated to Carson memorabilia.” But Christopher wants nothing to do with Kit; in fact, he seems tortured by guilt over the trauma that Kit and other 19th-century figures inflicted upon the Indigenous tribes. Richard becomes alarmed when he learns of Christopher’s further connections to Kit; each had three wives with the same names and a daughter named Adeline. Readers may find all this a bit contrived and far-fetched, yet as the novel progresses, Evans cleverly weaves threads from Richard’s past into his present by parsing out clues about his fall from academic grace as he unravels. This creates a dual tension that informs some of the protagonist’s erratic behavior. The most moving and convincingly crafted scene, however, comes when Richard, assisted by a benevolent stranger, convinces a teenage patient to reconsider taking her own life. Some readers may have difficulty endorsing such convenient coincidences, and at times, the dialogue feels stilted; Sharon’s explanation of a painting technique, for instance, reads like a paraphrased passage from an art appreciation textbook. Still, Evans manages to craft an engaging page-turner out of an otherwise implausible conceit.

A tale that overcomes an unlikely plot scenario to explore intriguing themes.