The Indian Agent

A healer with a conscience and a mission, Valentine McGillycuddy has lived among the Lakota Sioux -- mending their wounds, delivering their children -- and had once called the great warrior chief Crazy Horse "friend." Now, with his frail, beautiful wife by his side, the doctor is heading to Pine Ridge, the newly renamed reservation in the Dakota Territories, to act as the government's Indian agent.

But the Black Hills are a powder keg with a short, burning fuse -- and Pine Ridge a cauldron of greed, deadly pride, lethal politics, and treachery that could destroy a man of principles.

And suddenly McGillycuddy's dream of saving a people is in grave peril of being blown apart by an ill wind of misfortune and missed chances -- a gale that is carrying him toward a date with terrible destiny on a killing ground called Wounded Knee.

Dan O'Brien is one of the West's most celebrated writers. He is the author of nine books, including The Contract Surgeon, winner of the 2000 Western Heritage Award for Fiction; Buffalo for the Broken Heart; and a short story collection, Eminent Domain, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. He lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.