Dialing the three previous novels' tendency toward theatrical
catastrophe up to 11, Michael Gills' concluding effort to the Go Love
Quartet traces the Stepwell history of hurt and tragedy and loss,
arriving at, if only temporarily, a fragile harmony that allows the
present to be reconciled with the past.
Pursued west, Edgar Paris can't outrun his past. He ends up in an
Arizona jail for, "defamation of distinguished persons as manifest at
heritage sites," not to mention slander and assault on an officer of the
peace. Joey Harvell must bring Edgar home but before they return the two
will have to confront the bloody legacy of Navajo Bridge, aka John Doyle
Lee Bridge which was originally named for the lone man convicted for the
Mountain Meadows Massacre, the single worst mass murder of whites from
Manifest Destiny.
Threading the three previous books' violence across generations, the
Harvell family tries for all they're worth to make a home with roots in
foreign ground, just as the ill-fated Fancher party had, and Mormons
who'd retreated from Missouri, and the endless emigrants who ever walked
west toward the promise of a new life. New Harmony culminates the
Quartet by trumpeting its namesake: Go Love. In a life that offers up
truckloads of reasons to do the contrary, love remains the one buoy that
will ever rescue us from perishing. Even if it kills us, go love.
