Basque Moon - (Nellie Burns and Moonshine Mystery) by Julie Weston (Paperback)

About the Book

Nellie Burns and Moonshine travel to Idaho with plans to spend several weeks at a sheep camp, photographing scenes for a railroad company's travel brochures. But instead Nellie helps the sheriff investigate a murder.

Book Synopsis

Photographer Nellie Burns and her faithful Labrador retriever, Moonshine, travel to the Stanley Basin of central Idaho with sheep rancher, Gwynn Campbell, and his Basque sheepherder, Alphonso. Nellie plans to spend several weeks in the mountains around the basin at a sheep camp, photographing scenes for a railroad company's travel brochures. When their group arrives at the camp, however, they discover the current shepherd is dead.

Basque sheriff Asteguigoiri arrives to seek the murderer and reluctantly accepts Nellie's help in the investigation. But when hapless tourists, lawless moonshiners, and hell-bent cowboys enter the picture, Nellie and Moonshine confront some of the greatest challenges yet to their courage and ingenuity.

Review Quotes

Praise for Basque Moon:

2017 Winner of the WILLA Literary Award for Historical Fiction

"Cowboys, sheepherders, and moonshiners form a volatile mix in 1920s Idaho. When Nell is

kidnapped, she has to depend on Pearl to help her escape. The pair have some wild adventures while Nell tries to untangle a knotty puzzle and stay alive. Weston's second is a rip-roaring yarn that enchants with beguiling descriptions of the beauty of the Idaho wilderness."

-Kirkus Reviews

"Weston does a good job evoking the wild beauty of Idaho's Sawtooth Range, and Nellie is a likable protagonist... the ending offers a promising direction for subsequent installments."

-Publishers Weekly

"Basque Moon has pretty much everything I want in an historical mystery: gun fights and knife fights; cattlemen vs. sheepmen vs. moonshiners; a gallant dog; a handsome Basque sheriff; secrets, lies and murder; and Nellie Burns, a woman absolutely alive on the page, and a heroine of extraordinary curiosity and courage. All of this set down in the 1920s in the mountains of Idaho. Perfect."

-Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses

"Weston explores a more personal kind of borderland with her character Nellie Burns, a professional photographer who survives and thrives in a world of rough, violent men who cannot comprehend new technologies, new economies, and a happily emancipated woman."

-John Rember, author of Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley