Umbach Publishing, $15.00, ISBN 978-0-6152-0372-0
Contemporary Fiction, 2008

Our hero, Mike Doyle, has no idea what he is getting into when he takes out a five year lease on a long-closed mine in the town of Lostcreek. He’s a currently unemployed geologist who believes that there is still gold to be found in the late Jonathan Lost’s mine and naturally, he will be that fellow to discover it. But you don’t reopen a gold mine without getting other people sticking their noses into places that they don’t belong, and this is exactly what happens here.

I’m not sure what to think about Evelyn Swift’s The Lostcreek Legacy. I was expecting some kind of mystery or crime drama when I read the synopsis offered by the publisher website, but what I get instead is a slow-moving drama that takes its time to get to the boiling point. By the time the story moves up a notch, it’s quite too late for me to muster any enthusiasm for it. I find myself more affected by the descriptions of the setting rather than the story. This is partly due to the fact that the characters tend to speak as if they are conducting a tour guide around Lostcreek. Also, the story takes its own sweet time to go anywhere that I find it way too easy to put down this book as a result.

I’d recommend this book to folks looking to read about something set in a picturesque Gold Country town, especially if these folks are interested to know more about gold mining and all the hassles you have to go through with the local authorities in order to start up a gold mine venture. When it comes to the story, which I must admit is pretty well-written, I find this one a little too slow moving and a little too easy to put aside. There is something about it that screams “local interest”, and it just happens that I am not in the correct neighborhood, so to speak, to fully appreciate this one.