Effigies — Mary Anna Evans

MURDER ON SACRED LAND

Forging a human connection with the past is what it's all about for archaeologist Faye Longchamp. So she's thrilled when she's invited to Mississippi to excavate a site rumored to be the birthplace of the Choctaw nation. But local farmer Carroll Calhoun won't let them near the sacred mound on his land -- until he winds up dead, his throat cut by a handmade stone blade.

Was Calhoun trying to hide something? Faye herself has motive for the murder, and so does her friend and assistant Joe Wolf Mantooth. As racial tensions escalate around the sacred mound, Neshoba County ignites into a powder keg primed and ready to explode. It's up to Faye to outmaneuver a killer intent on preserving the past at the expense of her future.