Who is that masked man?

A 72-year-old woman is the lone survivor of a plane crash in the Bitterroot Mountains, and a younger woman, a park ranger, tries to rescue her. So which woman is the hero? For that matter, which of them is living the better life during those many weeks of search and survival?

Rye Curtis turns expectations upside down in his inventive first novel Kingdomtide (2020).

Cloris Waldrip, a retired school librarian from Texas, is aboard a small plane with her husband when the plane crashes. Both her husband and the pilot die, but she somehow escapes with only minor injuries. She repeats her name a few times into the radio before it dies, then gathers anything she finds that might help — such as her husband's boot to hold drinking water and the pilot's warm jacket — and starts down the mountain.

Meanwhile Debra Lewis, the ranger, hears the name "Cloris" on the radio, but she hears no SOS. After she learns of the plane crash she tries to organize a search, but she finds it difficult to maintain enthusiasm among her fellow searchers. The others assume anyone who might have survived the crash could not long survive on the mountain anyway. So why search? And even Lewis, though believing Cloris Waldrip may still be alive, usually seems more interested in her constant wine consumption than in actually going out into the mountains.

Then she begins an affair with Bloor, one of the other searchers and a man so repulsive readers may wonder why any woman would want to share a bed with him. Yet Lewis's real interest turns out to be Bloor's 17-year-old daughter, who helps with the search

Cloris, in fact, could not survive long in the mountains on her own, but she soon finds that someone is leaving food for her, even starting fires for her. When she finally sees the young man, he is wearing a mask, actually a shirt over his head. Together the two head down the mountain and build an odd relationship that becomes so strong that even when she spots her would-be rescuers she remains hidden in order to remain with her mysterious masked friend a little while longer.

Cloris Waldrip tells her own story, so we know she will survive her ordeal. But what of Debra Lewis?