Jill Nadeau at Wisconsin Book Festival

WPR “Garden Talk” host Jill Nadeau will be in conversation with author Patricia McConnell about her book “Away to Me” at the Wisconsin Book Festival. From internationally renowned animal behaviorist, Patricia McConnell, PhD, CAAB, comes a stunning mystery debut that fuses the immersive nature writing of William Kent Krueger and the taut suspense of Louise Penny set against the sprawling landscape of rural Wisconsin.

After a painful divorce, animal behaviorist Maddie McGowan (and her Border Collie, Jack) are starting over in their version of paradise: a 40-acre sheep farm. Between training sheepdogs with her mentor, George, and expanding her local practice, Maddie sees Clear Creek as her new home.

It takes Maddie by surprise when George is killed at a nearby sheepdog trialin broad daylight. Is it a freak accident?

Or has something more sinister arrived at Clear Creek? Reeling from the loss of her mentor, Maddie agrees to a plea from a local shelter to take in a traumatized German shepherd found abandoned on the outskirts of Milwaukee.

As Maddie works to heal the defensively aggressive shepherd she comes home to find that a beloved dog has disappeared. Her obsessive search for the dog pulls Maddie into an increasingly dangerous plot she has only just started to uncover.

As her romantic involvement with a young shelter worker creates more tension, Maddie must continue her search for answers as it becomes clear that her own life is in danger…