Peter Heller has written a couple of books that are favorites. The top one is (predictably) The Painter, and I loved The Dog Stars. I can also say that I tremendously enjoyed The River, The Guide, and Celine. So choosing to read his latest was predictable for me. It started strong, and parts of it remained strong, but…

Yeah, there’s that dot-dot-dot. Heller’s writing about nature in The Last Ranger was as beautiful and lyrical as ever. He creates a sense of awe and wonder that is contagious—even if it is his protagonist who is expressing these feelings, they gradually seep into your own consciousness as if you are experiencing that environment and the engendered response firsthand. I could never find fault with that aspect of his writing.

I also liked the characters he created for this book, and enjoyed absorbing knowledge from them about how the various people in and around Yellowstone spend their days. The protagonist, Ren, is a park ranger for whom the reward of living a solitary, blissed-out life in the midst of nature must be balanced by preventing parents from taking photos of their adorable three-year-old cozying up to a baby moose while its mama is ready to kill everyone within charging distance. He breaks up traffic jams caused by too many tourists trying to photograph something-or-other by the side of the road, he prevents the wildlife from being shot by “individualists” with no respect for the boundaries of the park or the laws of the land, and everything in between those extremes. His life is sort of predictable and sometimes irritating, but ever-changing and therefore not boring.

Ren’s best friend is Hilly, a biologist who finds herself up against both man and nature when advocating to protect the wolves of Yellowstone. There are a host of other characters, both local and transient, whose descriptions and actions are meaningful and/or entertaining even when the scene or description is fleeting. That is the power of Heller’s writing.

This time, however, the big lack is in the plotting and especially the resolution of the “mystery.” As the story develops, the focus centers on the brazen actions of a local poacher and then transitions towards the end to the discovery of a large semi-secret group of wealthy men who are at odds with the goals of a national park and are inciting rebellion amongst suggestible locals. But there are so many segues from these threads into a sort of “day in the life of” narrative about both Ren and Hilly, so many outtakes about fistfights between tourists, and ignorant sightseers putting themselves and others in jeopardy, and an unexpected and exceedingly awkward romance that the story line gets lost. And just when you think it’s going to resolve itself in the last 100 pages, you get some directional hints, you get a few minor questions answered, but everything else is simply left hanging.

I’d say there’s a sequel coming, but Heller hardly ever writes sequels, let alone initiates a series, and has not indicated one here. Given that, I feel like as readers we are owed the resolution to at least three plot threads, and no amount of euphonious language has made up for that in The Last Ranger. Disappointing.