At first, twelve-year-old Carol is not happy to be spending the summer helping her parents move her grandfather to an assisted living home, but as the summer wears on, she finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by his amazing stories.

In 1851 French Bishop Latour and his friend Father Valliant are despatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows-- gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly 40 years, they leave converts and enemies, crosses, and occasionally ecstasy in their wake....

When her father is diagnosed with Huntington's disease, eighteen-year-old Vanni abandons her plan to flee her small New Mexico hometown after high school graduation and instead spends the summer keeping herself busy with part-time jobs and boys, but that changes after she meets Leigh, whose friendship dares Vanni to ask herself big questions and make new plans.

The coyote howled four times. Salvador Zuni laughed, realizing he was holding his breath, then waited for another long piercing wail-hoped for another.... Salvador Zuni is a master carver of traditional Native American fetishes. He is also a cheat. He makes synthetic amber that rivals anything to be found in nature, complete down to the insects he places inside. His recipe is worth a fortune, and someone is after it. When Ben Pecos, the new resident...

While assisting Sergeant Jim Chee to investigate a robbery, Joe Leaphorn turns up a clue that leads to a search for the remains of a passenger on a plane that went down in the Grand Canyon fifty years earlier.

"Since his retirement from the Navajo Tribal Police, Joe Leaphorn has occasionally been enticed to return to work by former colleagues who seek his help when they need to solve a particularly puzzling crime. They ask because Leaphorn, aided by officers Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito, always delivers. But this time the problem is with an old case of Joe's -- his 'last case, ' unsolved, is one that continues to haunt him. And with Chee and Bernie just...

Discovering a link between the woman he loves and a political murder, Navajo tribal police Sergeant Jim Chee joins a map-wielding Joe Leaphorn on the heels of a fleeing Washington power broker.

Jayden expects to see nothing but brown his first morning in New Mexico, but after being surprised by colorful rocks, flowers, birds, and animals, he wonders if this place could become home.

With Christmas only days away, it snows so heavily that Jacobo the wood carver and his visiting grandson are afraid the roads will not be cleared in time for the rest of the family to come from the city, and that a sick neighbor will not get the help he needs.