The Desert Raven

Maggie Tall Bear Sloan, half Irish, half Yurok, and 100 percent gutsy, is a retired criminologist who shape-shifts into the Pukkekwerek, the Yurok nation’s monster-killing raven. After she brings down a cannibalistic child murderer possessed by a manitou, Maggie, and her lover, Jake Lubbock, a former sheriff, move from the mountains in Northern California to a desert town in Southern California. Maggie and Jake settle into their new community with one goal: an enjoyable retirement. She buys a pub, Jake writes a book, they both join the town's law enforcement reserves, spending Sundays with family. All is well for Maggie and Jake until the local sheriff shows them photos of a dentist, his wife, and teenage son, roasted over separate fires on spits, their flesh cannibalized. The police dub the murderer, “The Aunt Lorrie’s Salt Killer", because the murderer’s calling card is a container of the salt balanced on the victims’ corpses. Maggie suspects the Salt Killer may be the Chenoo, an ice-demon from Passamaquoddy and Micmac lore. The sheriff calls on Maggie and Jake to lead a task force to investigate, and that’s when things get strange. To complicate things, Sally, a ghost and Maggie’s closest friend, materializes to warn Maggie of an impending and unavoidable tragedy: Someone close to Maggie will die.