Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

The White Gates – Bonnie Ramthun

When Torin Sinclair finds himself uprooted from sunny Southern California and dropped unceremoniously in a little Colorado mountain town – in early December, no less – he’s certain that life as he knows it is over. The frigid cold is bad enough, but the dying snowboarder his Mom (Dr. Sinclair, the new town doctor) is called to treat on his first night in town gets things off to a creepy start. It’s little comfort when he learns that an old Ute woman had cursed the town ‘way, ‘way, ‘way back in 1952; and the curse was that the town wouldn’t be able to keep a doctor.

Though Tor thinks his new life will be a mess, Dr. Mom has the solution up her white sleeve: his first snowboarding lesson is tomorrow! And not only is Tor a natural, he makes two friends at the snowboard shop! Raine, Drake, and Tor become Snow Park’s answer to the Three (Twelve-Year-Old) Musketeers!

Musketeers or no, the three outcasts – the multiple-greats-granddaughter of that curse-giver, the neglected son of a world-class snowboarder, and the son of the curse-target doctor – have full lives. There’s school, riding their boards, removing the curse, and, oh yeah – solving the mystery. Why did a seemingly healthy teenager die of pulmonary edema? And why did the rest of the high school snowboard team blame Tor’s Mom?

The answer awaits, but first Tor will have to blunder through The White Gates.
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The last time we saw Alan Gregory, pluperfect hell had broken loose all over his life. The rock-steady marriage that had, so far, survived his wife Lauren’s MS had developed a wobble; he and long-time buddy Sam Purdy had violated one of those ethical-moral lines Alan had never thought he would cross; and he had become instant father of an adolescent boy when the mother of godson Jonas was killed. Suffice it to say that the almost pathologically mellow psychologist was feeling just a bit stressed out; even before his ex-wife Merideth called to ask for help.

Lisa, the surrogate mother bearing Merideth’s and her fiancé Eric’s child-to-be has disappeared; and Merideth wants Purdy – currently on unpaid suspension from the Boulder PD – to search for her. The woman’s mysterious disappearance is rooted in a chapter in Eric’s (and Lisa’s) earlier life, an event he refuses to discuss with Merideth other than to say that it happened years ago on a trip to the Grand Canyon. Alan’s assignment in Merideth’s plan is to seek out another hiker who’d been on that fateful trip, the daughter of friend and colleague from Boulder now living in LA. At loose ends and feeling rudderless – he’s taken a sabbatical from his practice, Lauren’s in Holland with their daughter Grace, Jonas is staying with relatives – Alan acquiesces to that irresistible force to which he was once married.

He knows skeletal details of the “Grand Canyon incident”: a woman disappeared the night Eric’s party stayed at Phantom Ranch, never to be seen again. The mere mention of the “incident” invariably upsets all six people who’d been there, with every one of them apparently hiding something from someone else. It’s into this lightly toxic ambience that Alan is dropped, half a dozen people a generation his junior, each one scared witless that Alan – or someone – is about to discover his or her darkest secret. Not that they’re the only ones with deep, dark secrets, as Alan will ultimately learn… Read the rest of this entry »