In the fifth book in author Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon series, we find National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon in the southeastern United States at Cumberland Island National Seashore. She’s been sent there as part of the fire brigade during a drought. She is there during the season when the Loggerhead Turtles, which are on the endangered species list, lay their eggs in the sand dunes. The observation of this opens the book, as well as giving Endangered Species its title.
There are the usual personality clashes among the staff of Cumberland Island, as well as Anna’s group of firefighters. Most seem to be no big deal. When a small plane used to monitor drug trafficking crashes, Anna and the firefighters are first on the scene and learn that not only was the pilot killed, but the Chief Ranger, whose wife is very pregnant, was on the plane as well. At first, it appears to be an accident. When a team from the NTSB investigates, they find evidence of sabotage.
Meanwhile, Anna’s sister, Molly, is dealing with an apparent stalker in New York. It has shaken her a bit, so Anna asks her boyfriend, FBI agent Frederick Stanton, for a favor and has him look into it. Sparks fly between Molly and Fredereick, while at the same time Anna is debating taking the next step in their relationship and moving to Chicago.
I love the Anna Pigeon series as it takes the reader to a different National Park every time. We often pass by Cumberland Island National Seashore on our way to Florida, and I didn’t think much about visiting it until I read this book. There’s some amazing wildlife there amidst the ruins of what was once a haven for the wealthy. The descriptions of the park and the scenery are so inviting. There are a number of times Anna goes skinny dipping as it’s that private in places.
The story is a bit convoluted, but it works. I guessed some of the mystery but not all of it until the end. Anna makes some questionable decisions, going off on her own when she should wait for someone else, but she seems to be the only one who is investigating the crash as a crime. This is even after the investigators arrive and peg sabotage as the cause of the crash. I find that a little unrealistic, but it makes for a good story. There’s a sequence where Anna is trapped nearby as marijuana cultivators burn their crop, and she gets high that I found to be pretty funny. There’s also humor as she deals with her fellow firefighters, who have some interesting personalities.
Anna is a woman in what has traditionally been a man’s world. There are other women among the staff, but not among the firefighters. Anna is trying to think about her future with Frederick while she’s there as well, and still smarting over the death of her husband, Zack, years before. There’s also a young black man among the firefighters, and his interaction with Anna are fun. He seems to be the most comfortable with her and vice-versa, except he keeps feeling a need to curb his language around her.
The audiobook version of Endangered Species is an abridged version, so I ended up listening to it using Kindle’s text-to-speech accessibility. I don’t think I’ll ever do that again. People who recommend it as an alternative must have brains that function differently than I do. The reading is stilted, which wouldn’t be bad on its own, but combined with how the text-to-speech doesn’t recognize punctuation or page breaks, it made it hard to focus. My brain really had to concentrate on the speech, and sometimes I found it difficult to piece together what had happened. I rewound the book a number of times so that I could understand it clearly and grasp what was going on. There were also times it used the wrong word. Near Cumberland Island National Seashore is the town of St. Marys. Talk-to-speech picked it up as “Street Mary’s.” Audiobooks have nothing to fear from AI if this is the best they can do.
Endangered Species is a good continuation of this series. I am so enjoying “visiting” all of the different parks and thinking about making plans to visit them. It gives a bit more depth to them as to what is interesting about them than a typical blurb on the internet. Following Anna’s character on her personal journey is fun as well. I laughed at how she apparently received a message that it was time to let go of Zack. Having lost a number of people close to me, I could relate, and I’m glad she took it in good humor as well. This is a solid entry in the series, and I can’t wait to see where Anna goes next.
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Categories: Book Reviews
I’m not fond of Kindle’s text-to-speech (aka assisted reader) functionality. It’s horrible on the PC version because it sounds robotic, and on a phone or Kindle/Fire e-reader, it does weird things like pronounce “Mrs.” as “M-R-S.” That said, if there’s no audiobook version, and consumers insist on hearing a book instead of reading it, then the text-to-speech option must suffice until a true human performance is produced.
I think I would rather skip it until I have time to actually read it then. I do not see text-to-speech as a decent option. It makers it entirely too hard to follow the story. I won’t be using it again unless there’s a massive improvement.
As it is, Kindle’s text-to-speech functionality is…bad. I’ve tried it a few times on books with no official audiobook recording, and I’ve regretted it. The “Read Aloud” function on Microsoft’s Edge browser is way better (but still imperfect), but it only reads webpages (like, for instance, this blog). It can’t “read” the Amazon browser version of the Kindle app…proprietary issues, I’m guessing. So, Patti, we’re on the same page here.
I’m hard of hearing, so I rarely listen to the few audiobooks I own on CD. Maybe I’ll do it at the new place in Cape Coral; I’ll have no one in the house to worry about.