The Rope by Nevada Barr

She wakes slowly.  Something is not right.  Her head is pounding and her body feels weird.  Where exactly is she?  What was she doing?  As she starts to wake more fully, Anna Pigeon realizes that she is not in good shape.  Her head is bleeding from an injury.  She is hot and thirsty.  She is alone.  She is naked.  She is in a pit in the desert and she has no idea how she got there.

As the hours pass, Anna starts to put her situation together.  She had come to the National Park, fleeing New York and her career as a stage manager after a personal tragedy.  Her work is not glamorous but it's hard and occupies her mind and body and that's all she requires.  She had gone out on her day off for a hike and come across three men attacking another woman.  Apparently, they are the culprits who are responsible for her current situation.

As the hours and then days pass, Anna's reserves of strength and courage are taxed to the max.  Can she survive this?  How?  Are her captors coming back and which is worse, their return or their absence?  They are hundreds of pits in the landscape and no one knew she was going hiking so no one has any idea where to look.

This is the book that introduces Anna Pigeon and her career as a park ranger to the reading public.  However, it is the seventeenth book in the series, written after the phenomenal success of the series as readers wanted to know more about Anna and what brought her to her job.  The action is fast and furious and the reader cannot help but wonder how they would fare in a similar situation.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.