A number of years ago I read a book by David Cole and I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to read more. I put his other books on my wishlist but until I went to Uncle Edgar’s Bookstore in Minneapolis I was never able to find more. This is the first book that he wrote in 1999 and although there is a little too much going on, a common failing of first novels, it was very interesting.This book is set in northern Arizona which I have visited but my experiences there were quite a bit different than what is portrayed in this book. This book shows the reality experienced by native Americans struggling to come to terms with modern white society while retaining their own culture.Laura Winslow is a Hopi Indian about 40 years old who left the reservation as a teenager with her boyfriend Jonathan Begay. She and Jonathan spent a number of years involved with AIM and had a child together. Jonathan became increasingly violent and Laura tried to leave him. Instead he left her and took their daughter, Spider, and has never resurfaced. Laura is a whiz at finding people by computer but she has never been able to find either Jonathan or her daughter. She worked with a bounty hunter but just before this book started they parted ways. Now Laura has to get out in real life to find people, something she is not very comfortable with. She has been hired by a Hopi man to find his granddaughter, Judy, who went missing two weeks before high school graduation. Soon Laura is driving all over northern Arizona hunting not just for Judy but also other missing girls and stolen artifacts. All clues point to rodeo bull riders being the culprits but there are hundreds of them and not much to distinguish which ones were the perpetrators. Coping with real life makes Laura abuse her prescribed Ritalin which certainly doesn’t make life any easier. This book is the start of a series and I will certainly be reading more of them. ( )