The Silent Spirit
A Wind River Mystery Novel #14
Berkley Pub Group
Mystery, Mystery: Cozy
September 1, 2009
ISBN-10: 0425229769
ISBN-13: 9780425229767
Available in: Hardcover
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The Silent Spirit
by Margaret Coel
Margaret Coel has a gift for crafting "compelling characters... to entertain her loyal fans" (The Denver Post) in each and every one of her Wind River Reservation mysteries. Now, in The Silent Spirit she relies upon sparse and dead-on prose to interweave themes of vengeance, social justice, and the powerful forces of memory in order to uncover the truth of the past and connect two homicides separated by nearly a century.
When the body of Kiki Wallowingbull, a troubled young Arapaho is found on the frozen banks of the Little Wind River on the sparse, open plains of the Wind River Reservation, the murder looks like the results of a drug deal turned deadly. Except for the fact that Kiki had recently spent time in Hollywood trying to uncover the truth of what happened in 1923, when his great-grandfather had gone to Hollywood with other Arapahos and Shoshones to star in the silent film, The Covered Wagon. Kiki's great-grandfather was the only one not to come home. Through the decades, the family has held to the belief that he was murdered in Hollywood. Now the family is convinced that Kiki was killed because of what he had learned, and that someone is still determined to keep the past buried.
When Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho lawyer Vicky Holden are drawn into the investigation, they find themselves on a trail that leads through the dark world of drugs on the Wind River Reservation and, ultimately, the giddy no-holds-barred world of Hollywood in the 1920s, when the studios made the law and the murder of an Arapaho actor could be swept away.
Other Books by Margaret Coel
Margaret Coel's Bio
Margaret Coel is the New York Times best-selling author of the acclaimed Wind River mystery series set among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation and featuring Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden.
She is a native Coloradan who hails from a pioneer Colorado family. The West—the mountains, plains, and vast spaces—are in her bones, she says. She moved out of Colorado on two occasions—to attend Marquette University and to spend a couple of years in Alaska. Both times she couldn't wait to get back.
Meet Father John O'Malley, history scholar and recovering alcoholic, and Vicky Holden, who after ten years in the outside world, has returned to the Arapaho Indian reservation in Wyoming where she was born, to help her people, and solve crimes.