Her first novel, Bitterweet was published in 1983. Nevada wrote and presented campfire stories, taught storytelling and was a travel writer and restaurant critic. Woven throughout these seemingly disparate careers was the written word. During this time she became interested in the environmental movement and began working in the National Parks during the summers - Isle Royale in Michigan, Guadalupe Mountains in Texas, Mesa Verde in Colorado, and then on the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. For eighteen years she worked on stage, in commercials, industrial training films and did voice-overs for radio.

Pushed out of the nest, Nevada fell into the theatre, receiving her BA in speech and drama and her MFA in Acting before making the pilgrimage to New York City, then Minneapolis, MN. Both her parents were pilots and mechanics and her sister, Molly, continued the tradition by becoming a pilot for USAir. (Mar.Nevada was born in the small western town of Yerington, Nevada and raised on a mountain airport in the Sierras. intricate, slow-moving, relationships unclear, each aspect draped or veiled by something else,'' she observes midway through the investigation) rings true on every page. A refreshing change from the brash, wisecracking order of female PIs, Barr's thoughtful and sensitive heroine (''This murder was. An affecting subplot is developed when Anna's lover, FBI agent Frederick Stanton, and her psychiatrist sister, Molly, meet. Barr, who is a former Park Service Ranger, evokes the minimally developed island's shimmering beauty while spinning an absorbing tale of danger and deceit that embraces a realistic description of conservation work and a diverse, engaging cast. When foul play is suggested, investigators wonder if the murderer was after Hammond, Belfore or Cumberland's chief ranger, Norman Hull, whom Belfore replaced in the plane at the last minute. Patrols are interrupted by an airplane crash that kills pilot Slattery Hammond, who was conducting drug-interdiction flights, and Todd Belfore, Cumberland district ranger.

In this fifth in the series (Firestorm, 1996), National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon is on temporary assignment at drought-ridden Cumberland Island National Seashore off the Georgia coast, on presuppression fire duty. Barr possesses that rare combination of talents: she can write a beautiful sentence and create a first-rate mystery.

Endangered Species by Nevada Barr