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    The Rope
    The Rope
    The Rope
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Rope

    Written by Nevada Barr

    Narrated by Joyce Bean

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Anna Pigeon has been a ranger with the National Park Service for many years, but she had a very different life before tragedy sent her west seeking something new. Now Nevada Barr finally tells the previously untold story of Anna’s first foray into the wild, and the case that helped shape her into the ranger she became.

    Thirty-five years old, fresh off the bus from New York City, and nursing a shattered heart, Anna Pigeon takes a decidedly unglamorous job as a seasonal employee of the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. On her day off, she goes hiking into the park never to return. Her co-workers think she’s simply moved on—her cabin is cleaned out and her things gone. Anna herself wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a dry natural well, naked, without supplies and no clear memory of how she got into this situation.

    As she slowly pieces together her memory, it soon becomes clear that someone has trapped her there, in an inescapable prison, and that no one knows that she is even missing. Plunged into a landscape and a plot she is unfit and untrained to handle, Anna Pigeon must muster the courage, strength, and will to live that she didn’t even know she still possessed in order to survive, outwit, and triumph.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 17, 2012
    ISBN9781441816139
    The Rope
    Author

    Nevada Barr

    NEVADA BARR is a novelist, actor, and artist best known for her New York Times bestselling, award-winning mystery series featuring Anna Pigeon. A former National Park Service Ranger, she currently lives with her husband in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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    Reviews for The Rope

    4/5

    223 ratings22 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Nevada Barr has done it again and written another spine-tingler of a book in which Anna Pigeon moves from one life-threatening situation to another. This book has a little different twist to it, however, as it is set in the past immediately following the death of Anna's first husband, Zach. Anna is spending the summer as temporary park help at Powell Lake. When the book opens, Anna is naked and imprisoned in a "jar", which is a hole in the rocks. She has a canteen of drugged water and a corpse to keep her company. Of course, it's obvious to the reader that Anna survives all of this since most will have read her later adventures as Ranger Anna. Nonetheless, the suspense is palpable throughout because it is never quite clear who the perpetrators of the evils against Anna is. This reader thought she had it all figured out and still managed to be surprised by the resolution of the story. This one is not to be missed by fans of Anna Pigeon and her many adventures.
    • 5/5
      I love Nevada Barr audios. The plots are gripping and I always learn something about the National Park where the story is set. Very satisfying.
    • 5/5
      The Rope is Nevada Barr's 17th Anna Pigeon mystery. It's a prequel that goes back to 1995 when Anna Pigeon was first hired by the National Park Service as a seasonal worker. She's 35 and fresh from New York City, still numb from the shock of her husband Zack's death (he was hit by a cab). Zack was an actor and Anna a stage manager. She loved her husband and loved her job and had to get away from it all.

      Anna finds herself working as a seasonal in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area cleaning up the poop of human visitors and monitoring the fecal level of the water. Anna is pasty, skinny, wears all black, and doesn't know the first thing about living in the great outdoors. She sees life and events through her experience in the theater, which adds not only fun for the reader, but help for Anna.

      When we first encounter Anna in The Rope she's trapped at the bottom of a deep hole in the ground; She's completely naked, wounded, and already dangerously dehydrated. I felt guilty laying in the comfort of my bed, sipping coffee while Anna suffered. Not to give any spoilers or anything--this is, after all, a prequel to the 16 other books in the series so we know Anna lives and becomes a ranger--Anna ends up getting strong and learning how to survive and thrive in the great outdoors.

      There's a strong lesbian element and character in this book (Jenny, Anna's roommate and boss). This was satisfying to me and will be to some other readers because I know I'm not the only one who had hoped, in the early years of the series, that Anna would end up lesbian and/or bisexual. That doesn't happen but it was refreshing to see a relatively "healthy" lesbian character who is central to the storyline in an American mystery novel.

      Long-time readers of the series will enjoy this book and I think new readers to the series will fall in love with Anna Pigeon. And if you haven't read an Anna Pigeon mystery before, this would be a perfectly fine one with which to start.

      Each book of the series is set in a different national park, which feels like a mini-vacation as you're reading. Well, other than some murders and Anna getting knocked around a bit. Barr thoroughly uses the unique landscape of each National Park in her novels. In some of the novels the landscape even seems like a character itself.

      About five books ago or so the Anna Pigeon novels started to turn a bit darker in tone and content as Barr explores how violence against women and children permeates our culture, so note that these are not exactly cozy mysteries, but they're not gratuitously violent or gory.
    • 3/5
      Anna Pigeon’s first adventure, before she joined the park service, before she grew into the tough-as-nails park ranger we love to follow. In some ways, it makes the book very strange, because it’s not the character we know, or at least, not yet. It’s certainly gripping, though.
    • 4/5
      the start of Anna Pigeon's career as a National Park ranger
    • 4/5
      Anna before she becomes a ranger; serving as a summer temp and brach cleaner. Dark but typical as lots of bad things happen before she resolves the mystery.
    • 4/5
      It's been a long time since I read this book but I have read the entire series, up until the most current book and I really like it. I love how the series is set outdoors in the different parks. If you like C.J. Box, then you'll like Barr too.
    • 3/5
      N.B. certainly has a following, but I have never been able to ascertain why. Her plots, her style, her settings all seem forced. I have read about five of her books, all of which have been eminently forgettable. I've even listened to audio tapes trying to figure out reasons for her popularity. None of it makes much sense to me and, fortunately, to those I hang with. To each his own....but Nevada Barr is not the National Park Service....at least not in any reasonable form I'm familiar with. As mystery type fiction she rates low as well. None of her scenarios good happen in most anybody's normal world. When coincidence piles on coincidence, the result is escapist trash which I find most of her work to be. That said, this was easily her best book and a book I read to kill a few waking moments before a trip to Turkey.
    • 3/5
      Have collected most of this series - set in various National Parks.
      This is a later book - revisiting the first experience of the heroine.
      Always glad to read the book that set the formation of the character - before I read the series.
      Thus, glad hadn't read any of the previous books before this one.
      Bit of a gory-story, but very interesting in setting the scenes and workings within the park.
    • 4/5
      Having read all the previous installments of the Anna Pigeon series, looking back at how Anna became the amazing Park Ranger she is and what motivated her actions, made for an interesting and compelling adventure to add to her repertoire.Anna has lost the love of her life and leaves New York to escape and nurse her injured spirit. She signs up as a temporary staff for the park rangers however, while hiking on her day off she sees a group of young men raping a girl. Rushing in knocks Anna for a loop for the next time she is conscious, she finds herself naked in a dry well.How she escapes is a testament to her own ingenuity and the aftermath is startling as well.Somehow I forgot how much I like Anna Pigeon - her strength of spirit as well as determination not to give in when threatened by others.
    • 4/5
      If you don’t know that this is a prequel, then the book is very confusing. Once across the timeline barrier, this was a pretty good ‘who done it’. There was a fairly perplexing question throughout as to who was going to end up the villain of this story. As will most of Barr's tales, this one left me wanting to visit this particular National Park.
    • 3/5
      THE ROPE is Nevada Barr’s 17th novel featuring nomadic National Parks Service ranger Anna Pigeon, though in a timeline sense it is the first of Anna’s stories. Without any gimmickry or awkward flashback-filled plot devices Barr simply opens this prequel to her popular series in 1995 when Anna has taken a summer job at a national park near Lake Powell, Arizona. She has left her job as a stage manager but still wears the black clothes her former life demanded and, struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her husband, Anna has been distant with her colleagues and new neighbours. So no one is particularly surprised that she and all her belongings disappear one day; all assuming she has returned to New York or moved on to some place that suits her more. In reality, while out hiking on her day off, Anna gets lost then stumbles across a crime in progress which turns out to have very sinister consequences for her She wakes up groggy and naked and realises she is trapped in a dry well from which there appears to be no escape.

      THE ROPE has many of the qualities that I have come to expect from this series including the spectacular setting which is, once again, so deftly described that I feel I too have climbed the canyons and cruised the lake and learned a little more about this poor old planet of ours and the damage we seem determined to do to even the prettiest bits of it. Characters, especially the women, are another strong feature of Barr’s books and this one showcases three very different women. Anna is basically the same person as we see in later books: determined, independent and prone to not doing as she ought though, naturally, not quite as fully formed as she becomes. She remains one of the few fictional characters I’ve ever thought I would like to meet if such things were possible. Her boss for the summer is Jenny Gorman whose job involves collecting the alarmingly large amount of poo the park’s summer visitors deposit where they shouldn’t and trying to educate those same campers on proper poo-managing etiquette (this was an aspect of managing a national park I had never considered but now can’t stop thinking about). Jenny is an intense character whose own dark history is revealed as the story progresses as is her developing love for Anna (she acknowledges that this will be an unrequited love as Anna is not gay though she fleetingly dreams of things being different). The third woman to feature heavily in the book is Bethy, wife of one of the Park Services’ office employees Regis Candor, who, like Anna, undergoes something of a transformation throughout the book. Her husband and the other male characters are less successfully drawn, being somewhat two-dimensional and using awkwardly inserted language that doesn’t feel right for the situation (or maybe it’s just me who has never heard an adult use the word ta-ta’s in a non-ironic sense).

      On a less positive note I did find THE ROPE slow, indeed almost glacial for the first half though it picked up a little. This is, I think, due to the book being almost ‘literary’ in the way it focuses on the inner lives and thoughts of Anna, Jenny and Regis & Bethy rather than being driven by complex plotting (honestly the plot is straight-forward and, I thought, fairly predictable). Even though I like Anna I was a little bored by her time in the dry well which lasted a very long time and had almost no suspense at all as it was a given she would escape so she could go on an star in the rest of the series. The other factor that spoiled the book a little for me was that it had one too many near-death escapes for our heroine. On my informal ‘believability scale’ one such escape from almost certain death is required, two is borderline acceptable and three, especially where the situations are very similar, pushes the story into pure fantasy territory. Perhaps this is only because I was listening to it, but by the end, when Anna portentously heads off for what is a blindingly obvious (to everyone but Anna) trap I started thinking of the story as a children’s pantomime where the audience is meant to yell “look out, he’s behind you” at appropriate points. In fact I’m not quite sure that I didn’t actually mumble this under my breath while on public transport.

      I did like the book and enjoyed meeting a younger, slightly more vulnerable Anna than I have come to know from later stories but THE ROPE won’t make it to my favourites of the series. If you are an existing fan I’m sure there’s lots here for you but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first place to start for those new to the series and its heroine. I can however recommend the book in audio format, this time ably narrated by Joyce Bean who seems to have permanently (and very competently) taken over narrating the series from Barbara Rosenblat.
    • 3/5
      Like many long-running series authors, Nevada Barr has to make some choices about how to handle her now aged main character. Some authors choose to start new series either with new characters in similar situations or for a YA audience. Some authors choose to freeze their character in time, eliminate the forward progression of the timeline and still provide adventures. Some authors stretch out the real time between books, but compress it within the pages. Nevada Barr went another route; the prequel. It gives her another book or two, but she'll still have to figure out what to do with Anna Pigeon once she hits the walker years. In this installment she isn't even close, but is the youngest we've seen her; about 35 or so and is at the end of her rope after her husband Zach's death. She bails on NYC life and heads for the hills as a seasonal worker at Lake Powell. Her aloof nature puts people at odds with her immediately and then we find her at the bottom of a dry well, naked, drugged and completely alone. The resourceful Anna we've come to know is just barely formed; a greenhorn completely unprepared for the backcountry. Even though her experience of wilderness was mostly negative, harsh and life-threatening, Anna found enough wonder and peace in it that we're not surprised at the end when she chooses her new career. I think it was Buddy's influence.In between Anna's many internal monologues about her past and her current (horribly dire) situaion, the mystery comes into focus and Anna uses all her wits to get to the bottom of it. I won't say the solution came out of nowhere because I did actually pick the right villain ahead of time, but there is some ambiguity at the end that I quite liked. A lot of people won't but hell, life doesn't always tie up into a neat little package.
    • 4/5
      A very enjoyable entry in the series. Always wondered exactly what happened to Zack and how Anna got started in the Service. She may start out appearing weak, but her inner strength soon shows up. A villainous villain, a couple of dupes, overall very nice read.
    • 4/5
      This "prequel" to the Anna Pigeon National Park Mystery series is full of suspense, fear, and mystery. This time, Anna is the one who requires rescue, although she knows something of the dead body she finds, but the dead body is not really as central as Anna's finding herself trapped, nude, and without supplies at the bottom of a deep hole.
    • 4/5
      Exciting, sometimes too exciting. I liked it better than Borderline, but Barr is always interesting. Borrowed from a friend.
    • 4/5
      The latest Anna Pigeon mystery takes readers back to her first ranger job, not long after her husband's death. Unsurprisingly, then, this installment reads like more of a psychological thriller than the previous books have been. Not only is Anna still struggling with the loss of her husband, but she undergoes another intense trauma that shakes her very soul. There is enough action, interspersed here and there, to keep it gripping, and Barr introduces a pretty interesting, well-fleshed out set of characters, including a deliciously morally ambiguous person who even at the end there's some doubt about. And a baby skunk!Overall an engaging read, with, as usual, plenty of nature thrown into the mix.
    • 4/5
      Enjoyed this book, which helps explain the tough person Anna is today. Starts out with a terrific bang, and doesn't let up with many references to what brought Anna to where she is today.
    • 5/5
      Nevada Barr has done it again and written another spine-tingler of a book in which Anna Pigeon moves from one life-threatening situation to another. This book has a little different twist to it, however, as it is set in the past immediately following the death of Anna's first husband, Zach. Anna is spending the summer as temporary park help at Powell Lake. When the book opens, Anna is naked and imprisoned in a "jar", which is a hole in the rocks. She has a canteen of drugged water and a corpse to keep her company. Of course, it's obvious to the reader that Anna survives all of this since most will have read her later adventures as Ranger Anna. Nonetheless, the suspense is palpable throughout because it is never quite clear who the perpetrators of the evils against Anna is. This reader thought she had it all figured out and still managed to be surprised by the resolution of the story. This one is not to be missed by fans of Anna Pigeon and her many adventures.
    • 5/5
      First Line: Regis Candor took a swig of his beer and watched his neighbor, Jenny Gorman.A fiercely held belief among old-timers is that Glen Canyon was even more beautiful than its relative to the west, the Grand Canyon. To those of us who've seen the Grand Canyon, it defies belief that another could be even more awe-inspiring. None of us will ever be able to form our own opinions, however, because a dam was built on the Colorado River, Lake Powell slowly filled, and the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was formed.Anna Pigeon's husband is dead, and life as she's known it has ended. In an attempt to escape memories and make a clean start, she decides to become a park ranger and accepts the first opening she's offered. Before she knows it, she's boarded a bus and headed for Page, Arizona, and Lake Powell-- an incredible blaze of colors from the water and the sky to the red sandstone cliffs.She doesn't mix all that much with the other employees, and on a day off she decides to go for a hike... and never returns. Since she wasn't the friendliest of souls, her co-workers think she didn't like the job and has moved on, but that's not the case. Anna wakes up, trapped at the bottom of a natural dry well. She's naked. She has no supplies, and she has no clear memory of how she got in this situation. As Anna slowly pieces things together she realizes that someone has put her in this natural prison and that no one else even knows that she's missing. If she's to survive, this city girl is going to have to survive, to outwit her captor, and to emerge triumphant. The alternative is unthinkable.Once again Nevada Barr hits a home run. Her setting is a land of incredible beauty, and she's a master of putting her readers right in the middle of the place she's chosen-- not just with breathtaking descriptions, but with facts. It's evident that Barr is as sickened as I am with how visitors treat the area, and some of her facts made me glad that I never tested the waters during any of my visits there.This prequel was a sheer delight to read, allowing me to see Anna as she was at the very beginning and to watch her develop into the character I've come to love and trust. If you haven't read any of the Anna Pigeon books yet and you're wondering if you should read them in order of publication (starting with Track of the Cat) or in chronological order with The Rope, you could do it either way. (Personally I would prefer order of publication.) For those of you who have no intentions of committing to the entire series, please don't pass up the opportunity to read this book.If you read the last book in the series, Burn, and did not care for the violence or the rather graphic subject matter, you don't have to worry about it in this book even though your antennae probably twitched at the words "naked, at the bottom of a well." Just sit back, relax, and enjoy this story about our Anna at the very beginning.
    • 5/5
      Thanks to Amazon Vine I've just read Nevada Barr's new novel coming out January 17, 2012. The Rope is a prequel to the whole series.In this story Anna Pigeon is 35 and she is still numb with grief at the loss of her husband, Zach, in an accident she witnessed in NYC. She has a satisfying career as a stage manager on Broadway, but she decides it might help to take some time completely away from everything familiar. She takes a summer job at Glen Canyon National Park, stationed at Dangling Rope Marina on Lake Powell.Anna and her housemate Jenny work hard at their job clearing the area of human waste, and trying to educate vacationers about the proper way to handle toileting (to put it nicely) in the great outdoors. Jenny likes Anna but can't make a connection. Then Anna disappears. She went hiking alone on her day off and accidentally found herself in a peck of trouble. In this story we see the making of the strong, independent woman we've grown to love over the years. She enters this summer job weak, too thin, and grief stricken. She ends the summer strong, resilient, and determined to become a national park ranger; I don't think that's giving anything away.Meanwhile, the characters she meets and the trials and dangers she withstands are engrossing. This is an old-fashioned page turner. Anna learns that the area isn't desolate; it has its own life and beauty. I discovered another place I want to see for myself. I also came away with a new respect for her character now that I know the beginning of her story.
    • 4/5
      In The Rope, Nevada Barr takes us back in time to before Anna joined the National Park Service. Anna is fleeing the New York theater scene after the tragic and unexpected death of her husband. She's taken a summer job as a seasonal park employee on Lake Powell, cleaning up after careless vacationers. On her day off, Anna disappears from employee housing. Her coworkers think she's jumped ship, tired of the monotonous work. But, Anna hasn't left town ... she's trapped at the bottom of a pit and left for dead.I really enjoyed this entry in the Anna Pigeon series. We learn exactly how Anna morphed from grieving widow to a law enforcement officer with the National Park Service. The book gives us a bird's eye view as Anna learns to trust her instincts and believe in herself again. Her summer at Lake Powell is just the beginning of the journey we've taken with Anna through her various Park assignments over the years. And although though the series, Anna's learned a lot about herself, nature, and love it's clear that her curiosity, grit, and determination have been with her all along.