When one of the scientists disappears from Yells Back Butte, where a Navajo Tribal Police officer was killed, will Leaphorn and his young colleague Jim Chee put their faith in skinwalkers, medieval plague -- or something more human and more sinister? People's conflicting beliefs are never easily resolved, as Acting Lieutenant Chee, a traditional Navajo who is studying to be a shaman, learns to his sorrow once again. We readers are luckier. Surrendering to Hillerman's strong narrative voice and supple storytelling techniques, we come to see that ancient cultures and modern sciences are simply different mythologies for the same reality.