When Tony Hillerman looks back at seventy-six years spent getting from hard times farm boy to bestselling author, he sees lots of evidence that Providence was poking him along. For example, when an absentminded Army clerk left him off the hospital ship taking the wounded home from France, the mishap put him on a collision course with a curing ceremony held for two Navajo Marines, thereby providing the grist for a writing career that now sees his books...

After the mutilated body of a Navajo skinwalker is found, officer Jim Chee finds himself immersed in a world full of drug dealers, F.B.I. agents, witchcraft, politics, and revenge.