Todd Robert Petersen

Picnic In the Ruins

Named Best Mystery Thriller in the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards
 
"Part mystery; part quirky, darkly funny, mayhem-filled thriller; and part meditation on what it means to 'own' land, artifacts, and the narrative of history in the West . . . A fast-paced, highly entertaining hybrid of Tony Hillerman and Edward Abbey." --Kirkus Reviews

Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence. Their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, sends a fixer to clean up their mess. Suddenly, Sophia must put her theories to the test in the real world, and the stakes are higher than she could have ever imagined.

What begins as a madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah becomes a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: Who owns the past?

It Needs to Look Like We Tried

A Novel

"Todd Robert Petersen is crazy–talented, and the wild, weird, hilarious stories of It Needs to Look Like We Tried are just what’s called for in these bizarre, frightening times." —Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and Trajectory

A domino chain of failures draws Todd Robert Petersen's characters together in these interconnected stories, despite hopes, dreams, and their best–laid plans

Everyone has a dream, an idea, a goal. But what happens when those desires are thwarted, when dreams and goals fall apart? In It Needs to Look Like We Tried, Todd Robert Petersen explores the ways in which our failures work on the lives of others, weaving an intricate web of interconnected stories.

A fastidious man takes a detour on the way to his father’s wedding and kicks off a series of events that ricochets from the bride to her real estate clients; to a crazed former homeowner and his sister–in–law’s reality TV lover; to a hoarding family whose lives are wrecked by their appearance on the second–rate show. Their daughter decides to escape the gravity of her tiny town with the help of her boyfriend who has a not–quite–legal plan to scrape together enough money to fund their departure.

On their way across the country, these star–crossed lovers encounter our fastidious man, and the Rube Goldberg machine of life continues. Their fling has petered out, and they are driving home, whatever home is left after walking away from everything they abandoned months before.