GRAY AFTER DARK

A young woman is kidnapped in the wilds of Idaho in Ihli’s thriller.

Miley is a 24-year-old whose sport of choice is the biathlon (“that skiing and shooting thing”). An Olympic hopeful, she spends the summer of 2022 working at a fancy lodge in Idaho; the resort is located in the vast Frank Church Wilderness, a remote place where someone could easily disappear. One day, when Miley is out on a run and swim in Frank Church, she happens upon father and son Fred and Hamish. The two abduct Miley at gunpoint and take her back to their cabin deep in the woods. The cabin is also home to a woman named Mary, who is Frank’s wife. The group has a vague plan for surviving any calamities that may cause modern society to fall apart. They decide to make Miley, whom they call Ruthie Sue, into Hamish’s fiancee. First, however, Miley must be chained and beaten into submission. When Miley’s longtime friend, teammate, and potential love interest Brent hears that Miley is missing, he heads to Idaho to join the search. (Even when local authorities think Miley has been killed by a bear, Brent refuses to give up his quest.) As the story follows events from both Miley and Brent’s perspectives, the burning question is when their two worlds will collide (the narrative sets up this eventual confrontation nicely). In the meantime, there is no telling what new depravity Miley will be subject to, particularly when her captors say things like “I’ll tame her. You’ll see.” Some of Miley’s backstory reads as less than scintillating—a flashback to 2017 that includes information about how Miley got involved in biathlon (“One winter when I was nine, we’d decided to try cross-country skiing”) does not add much to the narrative. Her excruciating struggle in 2022, though, gives the story more than enough depth and excitement.

A well-paced thriller that builds anticipation for a showdown deep in the wilderness.