Synopsis

When a Crow Indian acquaintance of Tomlinson's asks him to help recover a relic stolen from his tribe, Doc Ford is happy to tag along—but neither Doc nor Tomlinson realize what they've let themselves in for. Their search takes them to the part of Central Florida known as Bone Valley, famous primarily for two things: a ruthless subculture of black-marketers who trade in illegal artifacts and fossils, and a multibillion-dollar phosphate industry whose strip mines compromise the very ground they walk on.

Neither enterprise tolerates nosy outsiders. For each, public exposure equals big financial losses—and in a region built on a million-year accumulation of bones, there is no shortage of spots in which to hide a corpse. Or two.

Chapter 1 Excerpt

A big chunk of central Florida is known as Bone Valley to geologists and antiquities thieves, as I was reminded by a stranger wearing braids and wrangler denim who appeared on my porch one stormy June morning.

The man claimed to be on the trail of artifacts stolen from Crow tribal land in Montana.

“Stone carvings about yay high,” he said, holding his fingers apart. “They didn’t come from Bone Valley, but Florida is where a lot of tribal stuff ends up.”

My stilthouse on Sanibel Island, the Gulf Coast, is four hours from Orlando, and two thousand miles from Big Sky Country. “You sure you have the right Marion Ford?”