STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

Darlin’ Nellie and her dog Moonshine are about to delve into another murder mystery. And this one takes them down the unruly whitewater of the Salmon River on a large flat-bottomed boat known as a scow.

Hailey author Julie Weston is back with the sixth mystery book in her award-winning Nellie Burns and Moonshine mystery series.

“Salmon Moon: The River of No Return” follows Nellie Burns and her black Lab Moonshine down the Salmon River from the Sunbeam Dam east of Stanley to Riggins, Idaho.

A Wood River Valley woman who read Julie Weston’s book right after it came out said, “I love, love, love it…I’ve not been able to put it down.”

And Weston will present her new book at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12, at The Community Library. The presentation, which will be accompanied by pictures, will be followed by a reception and book signing with Iconoclast Books at the nearby Wood River Museum of History and Culture.

Reserve a seat at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/13296522. The program also will be livestreamed and available to watch later at https://vimeo.com/event/4745285.

“I love the Salmon River—I’ve been down the Middle Fork of the Salmon three times and down the Snake, Rogue and Green rivers, as well,” said Weston.

Weston’s newest mystery follows Nellie as she boards a river scow to save her husband Sheriff Charlie Azgo, who lies wounded in a derelict house on Idaho’s Salmon River. When a small gang of criminals escape with a sack of gold by river dory and horse, she, the sheriff, nurse Janie and Ace--a riverboat sweep man, give chase.

The story brings to life the rapids and homesteads of the Main Salmon River, as Nellie and the others encounter miners and settlers and catch salmon in the 1920s when thousands of salmon were still swimming upriver to get back to spawning grounds in and around Redfish Lake.

Weston, a retired lawyer, has done extensive research to recreate Idaho in the 1920s in her previous books, which took Nellie to Craters of the Moon and, into miner’s camps near Vienna and sheepherder camps near Stanley, while offering glimpses of the Chinese in Hailey and miners of northern Idaho.

And this book is no different.

While she has never been on the Main Salmon River, she studied Cort Conley’s guidebook, “River of No Return,” which offers descriptions of the rapids and homesteads along the river, in addition to providing maps.

“Cort’s book is like an encyclopedia,” she said. “I couldn’t get enough of it.”

She also researched scows, and dories.

“The scows were used for hauling things like mining equipment down the river. Since you couldn’t get back up the river because of the rapids—that’s why it’s called River of No Return—they would break the boats down and sell the wood when they got to the end.”

Polly Bemis, a Chinese woman who inspired the film “Thousand Pieces of Gold,” was living along the river during the 1920s, said Weston. But a lot of homesteaders had moved on as it was just too difficult. And the river was quite different then because there weren’t tourists going down it in rafts and kayaks.

Weston said setting her tales in Idaho has provided unique settings and cultures that couldn’t be replicated elsewhere.

“The Salmon River, for instance, is known around the world as the longest running undammed river in one state. There were people who lived along it who wanted to live off the grid even in the days before there was a grid,” she said.”

Weston based nurse Jani, an off-the-grid woman living along the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, on a woman she rafted with on the Snake River that runs through Hells Canyon. “I loved her—we rafted together when she was 89. Her husband ran cattle and sheep near Enterprise, Ore., and she’s a sturdy pioneer woman in every sense of the word.”

Like the real-life nurse, Nellie has grown more confident with each book and each experience.

“She started out a sissy. Now she’s helping the sheriff solve his cases,” said Weston. “I’m already working on her next adventure.”