Park Ranger Jack Chastain finds that he can’t escape the past in Migrations of Butterflies and Lies, a thriller by Colorado author J.M. Mitchell that takes the reader along on Chastain’s journey to find what happened to an archaeologist who went missing in a New Mexico national park.

On this international quest, Chastain runs into lies and conspiracy theories and must pursue the truth  and explore deflections that hide nefarious motives and goals along a timeline that spans centuries from colonial Mexico to the present day.

J.M. Mitchell

We first meet Chastain as he is bring watched by an anonymous individual as he hikes with his girlfriend, Kelly Culbertson, the daughter of a former state senator who is considering a second run for office herself. Chastain has moved to New Mexico after leaving a post in Montana where he found himself in the middle of a political battle over protecting another natural enclave. Now he just wants to study the milkweed that attracts migrating monarch butterflies, protect the park and live a peaceful life. But trouble seems to follow him.

After an archaeologist working in the park disappears, Chastain is assigned to find him, and he comes to believe the murder of a butterfly biologist in Mexico is somehow connected.

As Chastain investigates the disappearance and the murder, he learns about a forgotten Spanish explorer who supposedly hid a treasure somewhere in the national park. When the discovery of a seemingly authentic leather-bound journal sparks intriguing rumors, treasure hunters flock to the park, disrupting Chastain’s efforts to protect its natural beauty and find the missing archaeologist.

Another seemingly unrelated mystery surfaces at a meeting Culbertson chairs to get feedback on further protection for the Piedras Coloradas national park and monument, when an aggrieved rancher confronts Chastain and Culbertson aggressively. Two men who appear to be government agents have arrived in the town of Las Piedras, and the ranchers believe they are there to take away their land. But no one will tell Chastain who they are and what they want.

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A missing Native American boy wandering in the park, whom Chastain is sent to find, adds yet another mysterious element.

As the story proceeds, Mitchell weaves these multiple plot lines together and keeps the reader guessing which are distractions and which will lead to the truth, just as Chastain does. Although the plot lines are complex, they are not too difficult to follow, and Mitchell ultimately brings them together in a satisfying resolution.

The plot matches the drama of the Southwestern landscape. In Piedras Coloradas National Park, Mitchell creates a strong sense of place, rendering the locations in a sensory feast that has us experiencing the fragrances of pinyon and juniper, the sharp spines of yucca, the colors of sandstone and slickrock, scuttling lizards and majestic pronghorn, and the starlit sky on a dark desert night, by turns beautiful and dangerous.

Mitchell’s characters are fully realized as well. Chastain, though he has his flaws, is a worthy hero whose story is a vehicle through which Mitchell explores misleading rhetoric and conspiracy theories that seek to divide, and why people believe them, even without evidence. Hide Mangum, the rancher who leads a group trying to thwart what they fear is a pending government takeover of their land, appears at first to be someone who will not be convinced otherwise but shows in the end that he is capable of a different perspective. And in Kelly Culbertson and Mexican Professor Angelica Vargas, Mitchell creates two strong and intelligent women.

This is the fourth novel in Mitchell’s Jack Chastain mystery series, which began in 2014 with Public Trust. Reading the previous novels is not a prerequisite to the appreciation and enjoyment of Migrations of Butterflies and Lies, though if you have, you will recognize some of the characters. If you are new to the series, this one may impel you to seek out the others. All are page-turners that feature natural settings and explorations of issues that render them more than just action adventures.

J.M. Mitchell is well qualified to write about both the natural settings and the issues. In 36 years with the National Park Service, including postings at Yosemite, Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks, Washington, D.C. and Fort Collins, and as chief of the agency’s Biological Resource Management Division, he experienced first-hand the sometimes competing priorities of government agencies and citizens. According to his biography, he started writing fiction as a diversion from producing technical and scientific papers. During his service, he observed many debates over public policy, and Jack Chastain’s character and the plot of Public Trust grew out of contentious meetings at Yosemite and the Grand Canyon amid conflicting interests and expectations public servants must negotiate

Mitchell’s second Jack Chastain novel, The Height of Secrecy, received the Colorado Author’s League 2015 Award for Mainstream Fiction and was a finalist in the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. His third novel, Killing Godiva’s Horse, was a finalist for the Colorado Humanities 2019 Colorado Book Awards, Thriller category, and winner of the 2019 Colorado Authors’ League Award for contemporary Western.

Mitchell and his family divide their time between their home in the Denver area and their ranch on the western slope.