Synopsis
Saul True Sky loves his homeland in the Black Hills country of South Dakota. He will do almost anything to protect the sacred ancestral burial ground that lies on his property. His son, Will, shares none of his father's passion for tradition. A greedy man with little imagination, Will has bargained away a holy medicine bag found among some skeletal remains on True Sky's land.
True Sky will do what he must to keep the medicine bag. He will also do whatever is necessary to stop gambling interests from building an access road across his ranch. The people of Bear Coat, who want gambling, can't have it without True Sky's road.
When a man is found murdered on True Sky's land, with True Sky sitting quietly nearby, the town is only too happy to believe that he is the killer. It's rather convenient to throw True Sky in jail while the access road issue is under debate. With the old man out of the way, his family can be pressured to give permission.
Nate Rosen, a civil liberties lawyer from Washington, D.C., called in to handle the case, is not about to let Saul True Sky or his family be pressured into anything. As Rosen is drawn into the lives of these South Dakotan Native Americans and learns about True Sky's family and heritage, he ponders his own connections - to his faith, his father, his ex-wife, and, most of all, to the daughter who is adjusting to her new stepfather.
In his third novel of suspense, author Ronald Levitsky evokes the range and power of Tony Hillerman's Native American terrain as he brings his own unique voice to a brilliant story of people struggling to understand each other in a difficult world they are called upon to share.
Reviews
By dispatching his crusading lawyer Nate Rosen deep into Dakota Indian country to defend elderly Saul True Sky, accused of killing a rich businessman, the author all but begs for comparison with master crime writer Tony Hillerman. Unfortunately for Levitsky, Hillerman comes out on top by a mile. Rosen, a representative of the Committee to Defend the Constitution, harbors latent guilt over a teenage daughter forsaken after his divorce--and about his Judaism, which he seems unable either to accept or fully jettison. His client is considered by members of the local Lakota tribe to be a holy man. True Sky also owns a thin strip of land highly valued by the few wealthy locals, who would dearly like to get gambling up and running in lowly Bear Coat, S.D. The murder of which the Indian is accused involves elements of sacred land and artifacts, but the author is unable to sustain the literary higher ground. He soon has Nate surrounded by numerous greedy landgrabbers and equally numerous interchangeable (and inevitably flirtatious) women. Ultimately Levitsky only manages to make us more aware of how long it's been since Hillerman's last novel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Not exactly a private eye, civil-rights lawyer Nate Rosen ( The Wisdom of Serpents ) employs more than amateur intelligence to defend an old Lakota Indian accused of murdering a belligerent Bear Coat, South Dakota, artifact collector. Saul True Sky earlier refused to sell the man a medicine bundle found on sacred land--land the needy town wants to acquire for tourist and gambling purposes. Long-standing animosities between whites and natives intensify conflicts arising from impending development and threaten police objectivity. Comfortable prose, sensitive descriptions, tidy plot. Recommended.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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