When Daniel Begay hires Santa Fe private investigator Joshua Croft, it's an unusual missing persons case. The silver-haired, distinguished, and more than slightly mysterious Indian wants Joshua to return the lost remains of a Navajo leader, dead nearly a hundred years, to their proper burial site.

Soon Croft is hurtling his trusty Subaru across the Southwest, from Santa Fe to El Paso to remote parts of the Navajo Reservation, unearthing long-buried hostilities and reviving the mystery of an unsolved, unforgotten murder.