Sometimes a book delivers to the reader a glimpse into a different world. Such is the case with Peter Bowen's Coyote Wind. Bowen brings to life a small community of Metis in Montana. The Metis people are a mix of French and native Indian cultures. There are many Metis in Canada and several communities in the United States. Bowen's lead character is Gabriel Du Pre, a cattle brand inspector, who gets involved in a few investigations because he's the only "law" man available. He also is an excellent tracker and that comes in handy when he is assigned to look into a very old crash site. The mystery is not who was in the plane that went down so long ago, but how the extra skull and finger bones ended up there. And whose bones are they? And how did they end up in the crash site?
In this concise but twisting mystery novel, we discover the widower Gabriel's world of his lover and his two independent children, and his joy of being a fiddler man. It is a rough life but the only one that Gabriel knows, since his family has been in this community since before he was born.
While this book is written in a vernacular which may be hard to read for some, I found it fascinating. And Bowen manages to use this language to show Du Pre's humor. Du Pre is constantly referring to himself as just the "cow ass man", when he grumbles about doing more investigative work or when he is getting yelled at by his superior law officers.
A fun read and a great insight into a different subculture. Can't wait to read the next one.
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