Crafts and Life

Down the mountain from Sweet Pepper, Tennessee is Christmas Tree Valley, a place filled with hundreds of Christmas tree farms where generations of growers have made people’s lives brighter. Yet even here in this quiet, postcard-perfect corner of the world, darkness and murder can still stalk the night.
Federal Wildlife Agent Bonnie Tuttle has always had a special gift with wild animals. It was one of the reasons she decided to train with the wildlife agency. She’s spent the last ten years in Alabama working, but her mother needs her home and she’s back despite all the bad parts of her life she hoped to leave behind.
Her first day home begins with a fire on the island in Sweet Pepper Lake and the death of Harvey Shelton, the wildlife agent she’s supposed to replace. Bonnie manages to rescue dozens of animals from the fire – including a wolf pup that was shot with the same bullet that killed Harvey.
Now she’s hot on the trail of Harvey’s killer and trying to reintegrate the wolf back into the wild even though he seems to want to stay with her. Yet old memories persist in the small community where she grew up, and the killer now seems to believe that she has what he killed Harvey for. All she has to do is figure out what that is before it’s too late.

Bonnie Tuttle has come back home partly to look after her mother (who has the very early stages of dementia), partly to run the family Christmas Tree farm and mainly to be the Federal Wildlife Agent for the area as the current Agent is taking early retirement.  She has only just arrived and is going over stuff with Harvey Shelton (the person she is replacing) when a call comes in about a fire on an island, so they, the Sweet Pepper fire crew and the local police end up at the island.  It goes from bad to worse with two deaths that day along with an injured wolf cub which Bonnie ends up having to take home.  Can Bonnie help find the murderer, get the wolf cub well and back with his pack? Oh and deal with the fact that a local Shaman seems to think that she is the answer to all wildlife problems!