Finding Casey, By Jo-Ann Mapson

Jo-Ann Mapson is fast appropriating Larry McMurtry territory with her tales of modern day cowpokes and medicine men. This follow-up to her novel Solomon's Oak finds a middle-aged mother setting up house in Santa Fe.

Her adopted daughter is home for Thanksgiving and though negotiating the thrills of first love, is still struggling with the mystery of her missing sister, who disappeared eight years earlier.

A readable saga of hokum and humanity, it draws heavily on the "history and infamy" of New Mexico – a state that has been home to "train robbers… Spanish conquistadors… aliens."