Three Marys: A Wild Horses Mystery

A Serial Killer is Loose in Gold Country

Crime reporter Eleanor Wooley is covering the annual Mother’s Day Rodeo when fire breaks out and a dead woman is pulled from Little Bear River. The rural Gold Strike community turns inward. Eleanor, her instincts heightened, worries this year’s Rodeo Queen may be the next victim. During a high-Sierra excursion to Me-Wuk sacred grounds, in a last-chance effort to save the free-flowing Bear River from being dammed, wildfire breaks out again, stoking fears of another murder. Eleanor is spurred to action, assisted by Anishinaabe wilderness guide Leonard Parker.

Peopled with a cast of earthy, soulful characters, Three Marys ventures into parts of Western culture as remote to the modern world as a rutted country road.

About Robin Somers

Robin Somers spent years in Tuolumne County in the Sierra Nevada, where her Wild Horses Mystery Series takes place. She is retired faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University. She shovels horse poop and hangs with horses at local wild horse shelters and is a Volunteer Ambassador for the American Wild Horse Campaign. The first novel in the series, Eleven Stolen Horses, was a finalist in the category of Best Westerns from Pacific Coast Book Review. She is also the author of the murder mystery Beet Fields. She lives in Santa Cruz with her husband and frequents the Sierra Nevada.

Praise for Three Marys: A Wild Horses Mystery

“Robin Somers makes the Sierra foothills as compelling and full of oh-so-human nature as CJ Box's Wyoming, Tana French's western Ireland, or Attica Locke's East Texas. It's that good. I felt like I'd moved fully into reporter-heroine Eleanor's existence, took up her traumas, swung into her horse's saddle, adopted her firmness under pressure; she's a thoroughly real person caught up in a world of wildfires, violent men, sheer canyons, subdivisions, ancient Native secrets ... what a nuanced way to execute a thriller.”

— Bruce Kelley, editor-in-chief, San Francisco Magazine & Reader's Digest

“In this second of Robin Somers’s Wild Horses Mysteries, journalist Eleanor Wooley rides again into danger and High Sierra beauty as she covers the story of a woman found murdered at the edge of an unseasonable forest fire. As with Eleven Stolen Horses - the first in the series - Three Marys weaves together the romance between two damaged people, the commitment women have to one another, and a love of horses into a landscape so masterfully evoked that the smell of sage and the sound of snowmelt tumbling over rocks remain in the senses long after the story is done. If you crave a mystery with a strong female lead, a can’t-put-it-down plot, and an important message for today’s world, Three Marys is for you.”

— Kate Woodworth, author of Little Great Island and Racing Into the Dark

“A fire breaks out in the Sierra Nevada high country, a dead woman is pulled from the river, and Eleanor Wooley, a reporter for the Gold Strike Tribune, is on the scene. Report, don’t investigate, her boss reminds her. But Eleanor cannot separate the two. Something smells dreadfully wrong. Danger lurks in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Robin Somers has written a riveting novel full of mystery and intrigue. Through compelling storytelling, surprising plot twists, and rich detail, Somers weaves together the many threads of the Gold Strike community and Eleanor Wooley’s life. She writes Three Marys with pitch-perfect passion and timing. It is a novel with a big heart and a strong pull for justice. I loved this book. It kept me up into the wee hours of the morning.”

— Milana Marsenich, author of Copper Sky and The Swan Keeper

In Eleanor Wooley, we find a protagonist as strong and resourceful as the wild horses she fights to protect. When a wildfire ravages the High Sierra, Eleanor discovers she must trust her instincts to catch a serial killer in a wilderness just as dangerous as the people in it. Set against a scorching Gold Country landscape that is burning and choked with smoke, Robin Somers masterfully weaves an atmospheric, high-stakes mystery that explores the rugged edges of Western culture and the resilience of the human spirit.”

— Karen Nelson, author of Last Summer at Feather River and The Sunken Town