My Eyes Have a Cold Nose, A Historical Mystery

Elizabeth ''Gigi'' Garrett, a nationally-acclaimed concert pianist, has retired to teach music to the neighborhood children of a small town. When fifteen-year-old Eleanor Fielding disappears and popular opinion blames Chauncy Stewart, an orphan the town has raised catch-as-catch-can, Gigi uses her sharpened senses to explore the shadowy lives of her list of suspects. After she bails Chauncy out of the county jail, Sheriff Sly Rendt is intrigued enough to begin a pattern of late night visits to pick through her memories of her famous father, frontier sheriff Pat Garrett, for clues as to how to proceed. Despite his frequent admonitions for her to stick to music, Sly relies more and more on her discoveries as a warm friendship grows between them. Set on the vast plains of southeastern New Mexico in the Depression of the 1930s, My Eyes Have A Cold Nose sculpts an intense interior adventure from within the mind of a blind woman as she courageously follows her seeing-eye dog Teene to help a boy from the wild side who has no one else in his corner. Elizabeth Fackler's apt depiction of Miss Garrett's historically-true character is based on archival documents, interviews with former friends, and profound insights into the world of the unseeing. Ruth Hall's biography of Elizabeth Garrett, A Place of Her Own, also published by Sunstone Press, is a fitting companion to Fackler's compelling work.