Fiction

THE MAGIC HAD ALWAYS BEEN THERE.  Tep Jones has always felt the magic of Picture House, an Anasazi cliff dwelling near the seed farm where he lives with his parents. But he could never have imagined what would happen to him on the night of a lunar eclipse, when he finds a bone flute left behind by grave robbers. Tep falls under the spell of a powerful ancient magic that traps him at night in the body of an animal.  Only by unraveling the mysteries of Picture House can Tep save himself and his desperately ill mother. Does the enigmatic old Indian who calls himself Cricket hold the key to unlocking the secrets of the past? And can Tep find the answers in time?

A Dramatic Tale of Grizzlies and Gold!  Fourteen-year-old Cloyd Atcitty has been skipping school for years. He's run away from a group home for Native American boys, and is now being sent to work for Walter Landis, an old rancher on an isolated Colorado farm.  In a cave above the ranch, Cloyd finds a turquoise carving of a bear. Knowing that his people, the Utes, have a special relationship with bears, he keeps the small stone, hoping it will bring him strength. A terrible blow-up with Walter ends in near disaster, but the old man offers Cloyd one last chance: they'll ride together into the mountains to reopen Walter's abandoned gold mine. Among the high peaks that harbor Colorado's last grizzlies, Cloyd's courage and loyalty will be tested to the limit.

In the sequel to Hobbs's Bearstone, Cloyd Atcitty returns to the high country with his rancher friend Walter. But whereas the elderly man is searching for a lost cache of Spanish gold, Cloyd is hoping to find a family of grizzly bears that has been sighted. The previous novel ended with Cloyd believing that he had failed to save what could have been the last of the Colorado grizzlies, and he clings to the belief that its mate and cubs may be alive. Eventually, his search for the bears and his commitment to their survival becomes a journey of self-discovery. This novel works as an effective adventure story, an exploration of the Ute Indian culture, and a natural-history lesson rolled into one, all set in the rarefied atmosphere of the Continental Divide.