Book Tour/Giveaway - All We Buried by Elena Taylor

All We Buried: A Sheriff Bet Rivers Mystery
by Elena Taylor

About All We Buried

All We Buried: A Sheriff Bet Rivers Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (April 7, 2020)
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 1643852914
ISBN-13: 978-1643852911
Digital ASIN: B07RQH353V

For fans of Julia Keller and Sheena Kamal, All We Buried disturbs the long-sleeping secrets of a small Washington State mountain town.

Interim sheriff Elizabeth "Bet" Rivers has always had one repeat nightmare: a shadowy figure throwing a suspicious object into her hometown lake in Collier, Washington. For the longest time, she chalked it up to an overactive imagination as a kid. Then the report arrives. In the woods of the Cascade mountain range, right in her jurisdiction, a body floats to the surface of Lake Collier. When the body is extricated and revealed, no one can identify Jane Doe. But someone must know the woman, so why aren't they coming forward?

Bet has been sitting as the interim sheriff of this tiny town in the ill-fitting shoes of her late father and predecessor. With the nightmare on her heels, Bet decided to build a life for herself in Los Angeles, but now it's time to confront the tragic history of Collier. The more she learns, the more Bet realizes she doesn't know the townspeople of Collier as well as she thought, and nothing can prepare her for what she is about to discover.

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Character Post: All We Buried by Elena Taylor

Alma: The Woman Behind the Sheriff of Collier

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Let me tell you about the town of Collier. We are small, but we are mighty. With a population of almost a thousand people, our tiny community is perched high in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State.

The single road up from highway 97 to Collier winds through the most beautiful forest you’ve ever seen. Our skies are a little bluer and our air is a little cleaner than anywhere else on earth.

Not that I’ve been many other places, but I was blessed enough to be born and raised in Collier, so I’ve never seen the need to go anywhere else.

I make it down to E’burg once in a while. That’s travel enough for me.

My name is Alma, and I’m the woman behind the sheriff who keeps Collier safe. I run the station, and have, through three different generations of Rivers. Three Sheriff Rivers have depended on me to help keep Collier the best little town in the state.

I thought about retiring when Earle Rivers died, but Elizabeth—we call her Bet—needs my help. I’ve known Bet her entire life. She ran around here, chasing in her father’s footsteps until she reached eighteen, then she went off to college and on out to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles! As if Southern California could have anything she’d want. Anything that she couldn’t get here. Nothing but air pollution and lost souls as far as I’m concerned. Not that I’ve ever been there, I’ve never seen the need, Collier is enough for me.

When Earle got sick, she came home. We all thought he’d get better, but that wasn’t in the cards and now Bet is the last in the line of Sheriff Rivers that stretches all the way back to the founding of the town.

Unless Bet has a child. I’m not sure she’s got it in her to do that, but she might surprise me. Sometimes people do.

I might be almost eighty, but I can still do everything that needs to be done around here. I man the phones and know more about internet searches than Bet ever will. I handle warrants and emergency calls. I’m also a better shot than Bet at the gun range, but she doesn’t let me carry in the station.

She says I should leave my firearms at home, since I’m not a deputy. Seems silly to me, she might need my crackerjack aim one of these days. I’ll keep working on that. Maybe she could make me an honorary deputy and make it legal.

I’m also Schweitzer’s second favorite person. He was Earle’s dog before Earle died. I think he mourned Earle’s death as much as the rest of us. He wasn’t so sure of Bet when she moved back home. She doesn’t do everything like Earle did. For example, I know she lets Schweitzer sleep on the bed, which Earle would never have allowed.

Plus, she feeds him a lot more cookies and talks to him in baby talk when she thinks no one else is listening.

But that’s not what won Schweitzer over. As much as I know he loves those things, it’s her consistency that he loves.

Schweitzer wants a person who is reliable. And she is consistent. Consistent in what she expects from him. Consistent in her praise. Consistent in her expectations.

It’s what makes her such a good sheriff. She’s the same way with her community. She’s tough, but fair, and she’s kind. Earle was kind too, but you didn’t feel it the same way. With Bet, you know she doesn’t just feel responsible for us. She feels . . . love.

Love for her community. Consistently.

Schweitzer knows that. He knows she’ll never leave him.

That’s what we all want, right? A place to call our own and people to make that place safe for us?

You should come visit us in Collier. It’s the most beautiful place in the world, with its high mountains all around. Our dark, mysterious lake at the mouth of our hanging valley. Elk and bear and deer and bobcat. Our valley is full of natural beauty.

And it’s the safest place you could be. Well . . . most of the time. It’s true, we have the occasional murder, but nothing’s perfect, right?

Collier is close enough for me. And I ought to know. It’s the town I love. It’s where I hang my hat and call home. One day they’ll bury me in the cemetery up on the hill.

But not today. Bet needs me just as much as Collier does.

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About the Author

 

 

Elena Taylor spent several years working in theater as a playwright, director, designer, and educator before turning her storytelling skills to fiction. Her first series, the Eddie Shoes Mysteries, written under the name Elena Hartwell, introduced a quirky mother/daughter crime-fighting duo. With All We Buried, Elena returns to her dramatic roots and brings readers a much more serious and atmospheric novel. Located in her beloved Washington State, Elena uses her connection to the environment to produce a forbidding story of small-town secrets and things that won’t stay buried. Elena is also a senior editor with Allegory Editing, a developmental editing house, where she works one-on-one with writers to shape and polish manuscripts, short stories, and plays. If you’d like to work with Elena, visit www.allegoryediting.com.When she’s not writing or coaching writing, her favorite place to be is at the farm with her horses, Jasper and Radar, or at her home, on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River in North Bend, Washington, with her husband, their dog, Polar, and their cats, Coal Train and Cocoa. Elena holds a B.A. from the University of San Diego, a M.Ed. from the University of Washington, Tacoma, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.

Author Links

Website: https://www.elenataylorauthor.com/ Blog: https://www.elenataylorauthor.com/blog Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElenaTaylorAuthor/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Elena_TaylorAut
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19494739.Elena_Taylor Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elenataylorauthor

Purchase Links:

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