R R Carroll

The Big Lost R R Carroll

On the side of a mountain at a place known as Elkhorn Creek, dusted with an early October snow, lies the horrifically mangled body of a solitary hunter. Wolves had taken advantage of the uncommon feast and moved on. What they had left behind was a bloody mystery and scant evidence by which to solve it. Chester A. Tilghman, the sheriff of Custer County, stood looking solemnly over the scene of the hunter?s camp. As he surveyed the red mass at his feet, he dreaded the public reaction that would come when the details and circumstances of this man?s death were published in the local newspaper. The outcry, he suspected, would be swift and viral; the same reaction the Government biologists received the day they reintroduced the first pack of gray wolves to the remote Big Lost Mountains of Idaho. From that point on, the people of the region aligned themselves on one side or the other; either in favor or against the wolf. Now, with this tragic death, the two sides would be forming their war camps and bringing out their big guns. One army quick to blame the wolf for the hunter?s demise and clamor for the total and final extermination of these vicious beasts; the other desperate to defend the predator?s tentative place in the natural order of things. For a rural lawman caught in the middle, the conflation of politics and death was a bitter brew. The sheriff had to solve the case quickly, he had no choice. So along with his Chief Deputy Charlie Two Leaf and a little Chihuahua the sheriff called Hot Sauce, the man with the badge began to follow the twisted trail of the wolf and search for the answer to one man?s lonely death. The Big Lost won a Finalist Medallion from the Next Generation, Indie Book Awards for 2011.