Michael Norman puts together a good read about Utah, the state parks and surrounding towns there, and the people who are coming into the state now. Utah used to be a place of rugged settlers who never gave an inch to the outsiders. Now it is becoming a retirement mecca because of its climate, the desert, and the beauty of the whole state. People are beginning to enjoy the old-time values and the beauty of one of the least populated states in the West, which is good and bad—both at the same time. Having a draw like that brings in all sorts of people, who ultimately set out to remake that area to suit their needs or wants, which can be good or bad for an area that has long enjoyed an independence of spirit. Utah is beginning to feel the tightness that comes with unqualified growth.

David Greenbriar has an environmentalist group (the Escalante Environmental Wilderness Alliance—EEWA for short) that is trying to make development of the parks a difficulty for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the state, and so a new enforcement officer has been brought in to oversee the issues around some of the more radical things that are being attempted. This is Ranger J.D. Books, a recently divorced returning resident who was brought up in the town of Kanab. There is another group who is getting into the fight with the EEWA and they are the Citizens for a Free West (CFW), headed up by a local resident rancher named Neil Eddins.

Greenbriar is unhappy in his marriage and probably has made some people unhappy with his dedication to his cause as a way to relieve the stresses of his failing marriage. He is killed after being out in the desert for a day and a half, and it sure seems that his much younger wife's lover would be the prime suspect—but that makes it too easy, doesn't it? The lover is a guy named Lance Clayburn, and case closed—his fingerprints and other actions put him at the scene of the crime. But is it really as it seems, or are there more sinister things afoot and motives being played here... and were some other recent murders connected to this one, or not? If so, why??

On Deadly Ground is a great read, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. It was a bit heavy on the environmental attitudes. But in all truthfulness, that is the way it really is—sort of us against them—being played up daily in all aspects of life, in one way or another. They think we are stupid because we don’t see what they see happening to the earth, and we think they are idiots because they run around shouting for all the world to hear, like Chicken Little "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." Each side has its issues and ways of dealing with them, but people have to stop short of actually killing each other over an ideology.

It turns out that there might be a witness to the horrific murder. There also might be other motives such as those involving a huge deposit of coal near Kanab, with a huge conglomerate holding the mineral rights. This deposit is near the Grand Staircase National Monument, a totally beautiful place, by the way, and one to be checked out in your future travels—the rock formations are awesome. Good story, great descriptions of the surrounding desert and stone monuments in the valleys, and I loved all the scenery and the attitudes of the people in the storyline. Had a good time getting into the minds of those "older" residents of Utah and thinking like them, because I live in its neighboring state of Nevada. I fully understand much of their mindset, particularly regarding their beloved desert and the way of life they have carved out of it, as well as the resentment toward the "new" people coming in and wanting to change the very things that to their minds made their state good. In many ways it is a timeless story about the old and the new and the change that comes unwillingly to any place that starts to grow, without the people who live there wanting it to happen the way it does.