Stone Boy

Saul True Sky loves his homeland in the Black Hills country of South Dakota. He will do almost anything to protect the sacred ancestral burial ground that lies on his property. His son, Will, shares none of his father's passion for tradition. A greedy man with little imagination, Will has bargained away a holy medicine bag found among some skeletal remains on True Sky's land.

True Sky will do what he must to keep the medicine bag. He will also do whatever is necessary to stop gambling interests from building an access road across his ranch. The people of Bear Coat, who want gambling, can't have it without True Sky's road.

When a man is found murdered on True Sky's land, with True Sky sitting quietly nearby, the town is only too happy to believe that he is the killer. It's rather convenient to throw True Sky in jail while the access road issue is under debate. With the old man out of the way, his family can be pressured to give permission. Nate Rosen, a civil liberties lawyer from Washington, D.C., called in to handle the case, is not about to let Saul True Sky or his family be pressured into anything. As Rosen is drawn into the lives of these South Dakotan Native Americans and learns about True Sky's family and heritage, he ponders his own connections - to his faith, his father, his ex-wife, and, most of all, to the daughter who is adjusting to her new stepfather.

In his third novel of suspense, author Ronald Levitsky evokes the range and power of Tony Hillerman's Native American terrain as he brings his own unique voice to a brilliant story of people struggling to understand each other in a difficult world they are called upon to share.

This is #3 in A Nate Rosen Mystery.