Return of the Bones, Inspired by a True Native American Indian Story

In 1915 at the age of thirteen, Grandfather witnessed the theft of 2,067 family skeletons stolen from the Pecos Pueblo. He had run after the trucks transporting the bones, their skulls hanging out of windows and eye sockets hollow, until he stumbled and fell with his ear to the ground, listening to the rumble of tires carrying his ancestors far away from their resting place. Grandfather lay on the dirt clutching a diary belonging to the thief in hopes that one day he might use the book as a clue to finding the remains of his missing family. If only the old man could read. He kept the secret of the stolen bones for 84 years because he feared the men who took the skeletons might come for him, too. He begs his granddaughter to help him bring home the bones for reburial at the wreckage of their family pueblo, for he hears the skeletons crying, longing for home.

Hollow-Woman and Grandfather are the last of the Pecos people, but she wants nothing to do with the ghost pueblo of Pecos, a place which gives her the creeps. The family ruins is haunted by the Spanish Inquisition, church burnings, beheadings, blood spilling, ghosts, witches, and poisonings. Now Grandfather, an ancient ruin himself with one fist in a Pecos grave and the other in a bottle of wine, pleads with her to help him find the stolen bones of their ancestors, skeletons centuries old who should have turned to dust ages ago.

Hollow-Woman doesn't care about ancient bones. She works at a Native American casino and is of the modern ways, but she reluctantly agrees to drive the old buzzard cross country on his quest to bring back the missing skeletons to the rubble of their family pueblo so they might join the other ancestral bones who Grandfather claims haven't had a night of peace since the others were ripped from their graves by the thief whose motives are hidden in his diary.

Grandfather is a powerful shaman who believes his granddaughter does not appreciate family. He fashions a magical dream catcher that sometimes hurls Hollow-Woman into the past to experience the lives of her ancestors, some six centuries of sorrows, triumphs, and the dark side of religious fanaticism.

In their odyssey to find their missing family, they discover what the Pecos skeletons have been up to for eight decades since being held captive, and how important the desecration of the Pecos graves is to America and to mankind. Most importantly, she embarks on a spiritual journey and truly comes to appreciate the ties that bind a family's past and present.

RETURN OF THE BONES is an award winning book and first-place winner of Best Historical Fiction for the New Mexico / Arizona Book Awards.