At an electrifying pace from tribal ritual drums and flutes to the beat of the modern pop music scene Native American pop singer, Karina Salvo prepares to emerge from her reclusive cocoon to her first concert on a national stage.
Having written and performed her songs as a recording artist Salvo’s agent Petra Sullivan has prepared the singer to meet her adoring public for the first time in the heart of Appalachia, a small theatre in Bryson City, North Carolina. The concert is sold out and the local Sheriff appoints Deputy Steven Hawk to handle all security issues. Hawk’s preparation for the concert reveals that Salvo’s delayed introduction to the public has been because of her reluctance to have her private life peered into by journalists and paparazzi as she has a secret. Her father is in jail for killing her mother when Salvo was barely eight years old, and he has been released from jail the week of the concert and is considered to be behind the death threats that the young singer has been receiving in the form of hate mail for several months.
Salvo had been raised on the reservation by her mother’s people on the Taos Pueblo along the plains of New Mexico and is the first of her tribe to be recognized for her musical talent. It is to her aunt’s house that Salvo runs, needing a place to hide after the attempt on her life at the concert that has left her petrified and estranged from her manager, and has left Deputy Hawk injured in his attempt to protect her from a malicious Native American presence at the concert, the appearance of her uncle, Taima. Was he there in spirit or in person? Witnesses at the reservation swear he was on their land at the time of the attack but neither Salvo nor Hawk are convinced and as they heal, her spiritually and he physically, they conduct their own investigation from the confines of her aunt’s home.
Is it her revengeful father, the ghostly appearances of her uncle or the tribal drum beat itself that sound the death knell for Salvo and will Hawk, in Ledford’s second in a trilogy featuring the young African American deputy from North Carolina, be up to the task to protect Salvo from the snare he has inadvertently placed her in by bring her home to the Taos Pueblo?
