Teton Angel covers fifteen years, two states and a whole valley's worth of neighbors, rivals and in-laws. That's part of its charm: this is a small-town book, and in a small town everybody is somebody's cousin. It also means that a few chapters in, you may want a map of who's who.
Here it is. Keep it open next to your copy.
Spoiler-light: this guide only covers what you learn about each character in the early chapters. No secrets are revealed here, and this book has plenty.
The Robinson family
Conrad Robinson
The patriarch of the Circle Bar Ranch outside Driggs, Idaho. Tall, weathered and fifty-six, Conrad has spent his life breeding cattle good enough that ranchers drive up from Texas and New Mexico to buy his bulls. He's a man of strong faith, a devoted family man, and the kind of father who will show up late to his own sons' trail ride because a heifer needed help calving. He has one great wish left: for his scattered sons to come home to the ranch while he's still alive to see it.
Carol Lynn Robinson
Conrad's wife and the steady heart of the family kitchen. Where Conrad is gruff, Carol Lynn is gentle, and she's usually the one reminding him to return a phone call and mind his manners.
Thomas
The eldest son, an engineering supervisor in the Denver suburbs with "a heart of pure gold." He is married to Cindy and has three daughters, who, according to his wife, have turned him into "a soft, sweet, twisted piece of licorice."
Willard
The black sheep. When the book opens, Willard is the talk of the valley for all the wrong reasons: Jack Daniel's, a favorite stool at Rick's Bar in Victor, and a marriage to Tammy that's coming apart at the seams. The townsfolk will tell you something happened to Willard up in the mountains that changed him for good. Nobody knows what. Willard isn't saying.
Aiden
The fourth of Conrad's five children. Aiden left home right after high school, became sheriff near Jackson Hole, and later served as sheriff of Madison County, Idaho, before settling into a banking career and the Meadows Ranch next door to his father's land. Of all the brothers, he's the one who "always walked the line between protector and provider."
Daniel
The youngest. Daniel spends one hard teenage year angry at the world, and the only person he truly trusts is his best friend, Roy Polson. Daniel and Roy are a matched pair of trouble: hats out the truck window, rodeo dreams, and a running argument about whether you need a map on a trail ride. (They don't think so. Their father very much does.)
"What map? We don't need a map. It's a trail ride. We just follow the signs."
The Polsons
Roy Polson
The boy whose name is on the headstone. Roy is Daniel's best friend: a rodeo kid with a navy ball cap that has a 21 on the front, a lucky streak, and more heart than sense. His first bull ride is the stuff of local legend. If you've seen the cover, you already know Roy's story doesn't end the way his friends want it to. What you don't know yet is why someone carved a saddle at the foot of his grave.
Jean Polson
Roy's mother, who works the register at the gas station in St. Anthony. The book opens with her, and with a favor she has to swallow her pride to ask.
Kenny Polson
Jean's brother-in-law and Roy's uncle. Kenny and Jean have been "battling companions on different sides of the line" for as long as anyone can remember. A bag of no-bake oatmeal peanut butter cookies might be the start of a truce. Might.
Meadows Ranch
Kasey Robinson
Aiden's wife and the local veterinarian, a partner in "all ranching things" who rides a gray mare out to check calves and fences. Kasey loves the Robinson family fiercely; from the moment she walked through their door one Fourth of July weekend, she was one of them. How she came to the valley is a longer story than she lets on.
Trina Leah
Kasey and Aiden's daughter, and the reader's way into the mystery. When Trina Leah finds a hidden decree tucked inside her mother's cedar chest, the still waters of her life begin to stir.
Bluegrass
The family's collie and cattle dog, "an energetic and dedicated" working dog with a protective streak. Every ranch book needs a good dog. This one has one.
Jackson Hole and the valley
Miss Leah
A longtime family friend who runs the Hilltop Crest Hotel in Jackson Hole. Miss Leah treats her guests like family, which is to say she feeds them, fusses over them, and tells them they look fine in Levis and boots. Her hotel becomes a refuge for more than one person in this book.
Sheriff O'Conner
The county sheriff who gets called out to the Robinson place when things boil over, and who knows the Robinson boys well.
Harold Roberts
The stone cutter in St. Anthony. Fresh snow on his walk, a cowbell over his door, and a block of granite that "just doesn't know what it wants to be."
Judge Lewis
A hard-nosed judge with a twenty-acre spread, a private plane on call, and secrets of his own.
Why there are so many of them
Roland Hunter grew up in ranch country, where nobody is a stranger for long and everyone's business is everyone's business. Teton Angel is built the same way. The story moves like gossip moves through a small town, from the gas station to the barstool to the church pew, and part of the fun is watching how a favor in chapter one ripples all the way to a stone on a hillside.
Start with the Robinsons. The rest will find you.
