Breaking Wild

Les Becquets's debut is both elegantly written and plotted, but at its core, the novel is an intelligent and unusual character study of two very strong, very different women. Amy Raye and Pru will stay with you long after you finish this evocative, lyrical work. Recommended By Jill O., Powells.com

In captivating prose, Diane Les Becquets tells the story of one woman missing in the Colorado wilderness and another bent on discovering the missing woman’s whereabouts, in an unforgettably moving and thrilling literary debut.
 
It is the last weekend of the season for Amy Raye Latour to get away. Driven to spend days alone in the wilderness, Amy Raye, mother of two, is compelled by the quiet and the rush of nature. But this time, her venture into a remote area presents a different set of dangers than Amy Raye has planned for and she finds herself on the verge of the precarious edge that she’s flirted with her entire life.
 
When Amy Raye doesn’t return to camp, ranger Pru Hathaway and her dog respond to the missing person’s call. After an unexpected snowfall and few leads, the operation turns into a search and recovery. Pru, though, is not resigned to that. The more she learns about the woman for whom she is searching, and about Amy Raye’s past, the more she suspects that Amy Raye might yet be alive. Pru’s own search becomes an obsession for a woman whose life is just as mysterious as the clues she has left behind.
 
As the novel follows Amy Raye and Pru in alternating threads, Breaking Wild assumes the white-knuckled pace of a thriller laying bare Amy Raye’s ultimate reckoning with the secrets of her life, and Pru’s dogged pursuit of the woman who, against all odds, she believes she can find.

“Les Becquets’ prose is as spare, haunting, and nuanced as the wild landscape she brings to life…A transcendent, breathless exploration of the darkest depths of loneness and the unbreakable human spirit.” Kirkus Reviews

“A taut and thrilling narrative…Skillfully blending the emotional terrain of women’s fiction with a briskly paced adventure story, Les Becquets packs her narrative with fascinating details about hunting, the logistics of search-and-rescue, and the beauty and danger of the wilderness.” Booklist

“The sheer force of this book lies in the force of its two main characters. These are complicated women who carry long stories with them, but they’re defined, in the end, not by their histories, their loves, their mistakes or their suffering, but by their actions — by the pure determination with which they push themselves to extremes, in the most physical and concrete sense, when it’s a stark question of life or death.” Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Place

Diane Les Becquets is a Professor of English and a faculty member at Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA Program in Fiction and Nonfiction. In addition to teaching creative writing, she has worked as a medical journalist; an archaeology assistant; a marketing consultant; a sand and gravel dispatcher; a copywriter; and a lifeguard, and is also an avid outdoorswoman. A native of Nashville, she spent almost fourteen years living in a small Colorado ranching town before moving to New Hampshire.