Nancy Pickard’s novel is The Virgin of Small Plains.

Yesterday in Kansas City my bank’s thermometer read 108 degrees the one time I ventured out of the house. The rest of the time I spent inside, in the air conditioning, reading this novel. I consumed the entire thing in a little over twelve hours, partly because it was too hot to do anything else, but also because I could not put the book down. A book that wraps you up so completely you don’t want to step away from it is, I guess, a sign of a good book, right? So why do I feel like I wasted one of my rare days off reading it?

At heart, The Virgin of Small Plains is a murder mystery set in the rural Flint Hills community of Small Plains, Kansas. On a snowy night in 1987 a rancher and his two sons, Rex and Patrick, find the frozen body of a naked, young and beautiful girl. The rancher takes the girl’s body to the town doctor where the doctor, unknowingly witnessed by 18 year old Mitch, beats in the girl’s face so that she is unidentifiable. Mitch runs home and tells his father what he has seen. The next morning, Mitch is driven out of town by his father and told he must cut off all contact with anyone he knows in Small Plains because the rancher and doctor are threatening to accuse Mitch himself of murdering the young girl. Left behind in Small Plains is Mitch’s devastated and confused girlfriend, Abby.

Jump forward seventeen years and the murder of the young girl has remained unsolved. The town named her “the Virgin” and buried her, unnamed, in a grave which, over time, has developed its own mythology. The Virgin is said to be responsible for several “miracle” healings and townspeople and tourists alike visit her grave to request her aid. Rex, Patrick, Mitch, Abby, the rancher, the doctor, and their families all seem to have been scarred by the Virgin’s murder and its aftermath. When Mitch finally returns to Small Plains after his seventeen year absence those scars are reopened and the push to solve the Virgin’s murder is renewed.

There’s no doubt that Pickard can write a good plot. Virgin’s plot barrels forward so relentlessly you’re afraid that it will continue on without you if you put the book down. And yet, for the rapid pace, you never feel rushed as a reader. The characters, on the other hand, are pretty flat. That leaves the reader setting. Throughout the book Pickard accurately uses Kansas’ unpredictable weather to mirror and further her plot. Like the characters in the book, I grew up in a rural community in Kansas and this use of Kansas weather seemed predictable. Perhaps it’s my own damned fault for reading a book set in Kansas; but when I read a novel I want to feel like I’ve gone somewhere or met someone new when I’ve finished the book. Instead, when I finished Virgin, I felt like I had sat on my couch all day.