The Alpine Uproar

Picturesque Alpine is no longer the brawling logging town of yesteryear. So when a drunken fight at the Icicle Creek Tavern leaves a loner named Alvin De Muth dead, the residents feel as if they’ve gone back to the Bad Old Days. The inquiry into the incident should be a no-brainer, but since the witnesses were half-tanked at the time, Sheriff Milo Dodge is left with conflicting stories. But soon Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, has an even bigger story to report: a heartbreaking highway accident that leaves two people dead and one on life support. Rumors are flying: Are the two tragedies linked in some inexplicable way? Assisted by that human bulldozer Vida Runkel, the Advocate’s House & Home editor, Emma goes for the gold.

Mary Daheim is a Seattle native who started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982 she launched a career that is now distinguished by more than fifty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008 she was inducted into the University of Washington’s? Communications Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in Seattle with her husband, David, a retired professor of cinema, English, and literature. The Daheims have three daughters: Barbara, Katherine, and Magdalen.