The Divide

By Nicholas Evans

Ben decided his wife, Sarah, was frigid. So when he met beautiful, young Eve, he was ready. Ready for a new love, a new life and a new family. Never mind that his request for a divorce tore his family apart. Never mind that his wife loved him very much. Never mind that it especially threw his daughter, Abbie, into a tailspin that took her down a dark path that ended in her death on a remote mountain in Montana.
It all started at the dude ranch, The Divide. Ben and Sarah and their two kids Josh and Abbie had been vacationing there for years. They loved it. But that is where Ben first saw Eve. He was smitten. He couldn't stop thinking about her. He even visited her at her home in Santa Fe. When she said she wouldn't date a married man, Ben took it as encouragement to end his marriage.
Sarah was devastated. Perhaps her obvious distress affected her teenage daughter too. Anyway, Abbie was very angry at her father and seemed to channel that rage into environmental activism. She was at a protest where the protesters were teargassed when she was rescued by another activist, Rolf. He tended her wounds and bathed her eyes and he seemed so caring and committed to the cause of environmental activism. Abbie was completely won over and became his lover and co-conspirator. They set fires and spray painted slogans and Rolf led her deeper and deeper down the path to destruction.  Then they accidentally killed a young man when they tried to set fire to his father's house and he caught them. In the confrontation and struggle, the man was killed. Abbie and Rolf went into hiding and Abbie cut off almost all communication with her family, per Rolf's instructions.
And then her body was found, frozen in ice on that remote mountainside by two back country skiers.

This was an OK story. It starts out as a mystery. But it is mostly about the end of the marriage of Ben and Sarah. And about Abbie's conversion from college student to eco-terrorist.
The thing is, I thought I was reading a mystery story. I kept waiting for the investigation but was wading through chapter after chapter of the family's back story. Frankly, I skipped a lot of that, thinking the investigation was sure to start soon. But it never did.
So this is not a murder mystery. It is the story of a family that went off the rails, primarily because of one selfish man, Ben. Beyond the death of his daughter, Ben never really pays much of a price either. He is pleased with his new life in Santa Fe, his new love, Eve and is a second father to her young son. He has a successful new career, his girl friend is young and beautiful and his teenage son has forgiven him and likes his new family. Meanwhile the ex-wife is still reeling from the abrupt and unexpected end of their over twenty years of marriage. She is still carrying a torch for her faithless husband. She is depressed, alone and lonely. The author finally throws her a bone and gets her a new boy friend at the very end of the story. Easy to see where his sympathies lie: with the cheating husband.

A review by Kirkus Reviews.