
A visceral and compelling mystery about a Cherokee archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who is summoned to rural Oklahoma to investigate the disappearance of two women…one of them her sister. There are secrets in the land. As an archeologist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Syd Walker spends her days in Rhode Island trying to protect the land's indigenous past, even as she’s escaping her own. While Syd is dedicated to her job, she’s haunted by a night of violence she barely escaped in her Oklahoma hometown fifteen years ago. Though she swore she’d never go back, the past comes calling. When a skull is found near the crime scene of her youth, just as her sister, Emma Lou, vanishes, Syd knows she must return home. She refuses to let her sister's disappearance, or the remains, go ignored—as so often happens in cases of missing Native women. But not everyone is glad to have Syd home, and she can feel the crosshairs on her back. Still, the deeper Syd digs, the more she uncovers about a string of missing indigenous women cases going back decades. To save her sister, she must expose a darkness in the town that no one wants to face—not even Syd. The truth will be unearthed.
Author

Vanessa Lillie is originally from Miami, Oklahoma, where she spent a lot of time investigating local ghost stories at the public library. Her next book, Blood Sisters, releases October 31, 2023 and is the launch of a new series with #MMIW2S at the heart of the stories. She is the author of the bestselling thrillers Little Voices (October 2019) and For the Best (September 2020). She created and co-authored the instant bestselling Audible Original Young Rich Widows (April 2022), with more than 20,000 reviews (and the sequel is on the way)! With fifteen years of marketing and communications experience, Vanessa was a columnist for the Providence Journal and hosts a regular Instagram Lives with crime fiction authors. She is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma living on Narragansett land in Rhode Island. Connect with her on Instagram!