BROWN-EYED GIRL

A soaring debut from Swift, who combines a bittersweet romance, resumed after a 20-year hiatus, with academic infighting,

paramilitary paranoia, and a puzzle dating back to WWII. After several decades away, Sally Alder returns to Laramie, Wyoming, to assume the newly established Dunwoodie Distinguished Chair in American Women's History, endowed by the late poet Margaret Dunwoodie. While sorting through the detritus of Meg Dunwoodie’s life, Sally uncovers a cache of unpublished poems, a stash of museum-quality diamonds, and hints that Ernst Malthus, Meg's wartime lover, may have been spying for the Nazis, or the English, or the Americans. Meanwhile, a local skinhead who feels entitled to a share of Meg's fortune plants a dead cat in Sally's yard, cuts her brake line, and informs the Unknown Soldiers, a group of misfits funded by crazy billionaire Elroy Foote, that Krugerrands are hidden on Dunwoodie property. Trying to wrest control of the Dunwoodie millions from Sally, Foote and his minions, along with the obligatory malcontents in the university's history department, start suit to bring the Dunwoodie chair, archives, and monies under their auspices, and, of course, have Sally fired. The ATF and FBI converge on Foote's compound in a scene reminiscent of Ruby Ridge, and Sally and Hawk, her college sweetheart, sort through the betrayals that touched Meg's life and theirs. Swift makes you believe in second chances, in lifelong friendships and love, and she is spot-on in her portrayal of small-town gossip and small-minded academics. It’s inspiring to drink in her passionate view of middle age and her insistence that one's

character outlasts one's youth and indiscretions.