Attis McCurtain is a mixed-blood Choctaw Indian whose return from Vietnam to his small California town initiates a chain of events involving self-discovery and the false divisions between this world and the spirit world. Mundo Morales, the Chicano cop who was Attis's best friend, and Hoey and Cole McCurtain, Attis's father and younger brother, all are forced to come to grips with who they are as mixed-blood people in modern America. At the same time they must try to solve the mystery of how Attis ended up dead in a river after his incarceration in a mental institution for the murder of his white girlfriend upon returning from Vietnam. Ghosts and Choctaw soul eaters move throughout this novel as matter-of-factly as do the living characters, assisting Cole with the search for his brother's missing body and Mundo with the search for Attis's murderer, while leading each man deeper into his own roots. A fine inaugural novel for an important new series from one of the premier publishers of works by and about Native Americans.

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