Police chief Mitchell Bushyhead has never given a lot of thought to the fact that he is half-Cherokee. His life is very much the same as that of his non-Indian neighbors in the little Oklahoma town of Buckskin. But Mitch is a conscientious policeman, and when he is confronted with the murder of a local Indian artist named Joe Pigeon, he realizes that he's going to have to know more about his Cherokee people and their ways before he can find the killer. With the help of his deputy, the full-blooded Cherokee Virgil Rabbit, Mitch gets closer to the Cherokee community in Buckskin than he has ever been before. In the course of the investigation, Virgil takes Mitch to meet an old medicine man. From this encounter, and the old man's characteristically roundabout story, Mitch is able to glean the information he needs to find the artist's killer - and the larger evil behind his death. What is more, the meeting awakens Mitch's awareness of how important his Cherokee roots can be to him. The police chief has been emotionally on hold since the death of his wife from cancer. His contact with the Cherokees, and a growing relationship with his teenage daughter's new teacher, begins the process of a new and wholesome awakening.

For some time, rumors have circulated that the lodge occupies the site of an old Indian graveyard. According to Cherokee legend, such sacrilege is bound to have unpleasant repercussions. When Thorton is found dead in the front seat of a car belonging to one of the lodge staff, the lodge's Indian employees are sure the death is the work of a night walker, a Cherokee witch. To keep half the lodge's work force from walking out, Thornton's mother calls in an old Cherokee medicine man to drive away the night walker. Meanwhile, Mitch concentrates on the human suspects - and he has plenty of disgruntled employees, bitter family members, a young wife trapped in an extramarital affair, a young husband bent on revenge. When a second victim is found, it becomes obvious that one of these people knew too much. Adding to the pressure, Mitch must also handle the problems of an understaffed police department, an angry teenage daughter, and a lover who is less than satisfied with their relationship.

The Cherokee Heritage festival is about to begin, and Buckskin Oklahoma is bustling - until the murder of Tamarah Birch, a 3rd grade girl from the tribal boarding school, dampens the festivities for the townspeople and especially for police chief Mitch Bushyhead.

Winter is bearing down on the Cherokee Nation. And in the cold and snow of the wind-whipped woods outside the town of Buckskin, an escaped prisoner is on the loose - a man bent on rescuing his sister and getting even with her abusive husband. Henderson Sixkiller is the runaway. Jessie Hatch is his sister, now hiding out in the home of a local doctor in fear that her husband will attack her again. For Buckskin chief of police Mitch Bushyhead, the violent family drama explodes when a call comes in to his station house: a body has been found in the woods. The dead man is Jessie Hatch's husband, a prominent Buckskin citizen. As soon as Mitch Bushyhead starts investigating a community's dark secrets bubble to the surface - the secrets of a family torn by violence, of young men drifting into a life of crime, of a man facing a terror he could confess to no one. While Henderson Sixkiller is Bushyhead's first and leading suspect, there are nagging questions to which the police chief must find answers: questions about the beautiful, enigmatic doctor who sheltered Sixkiller's sister, Jessie; questions about the strange light that Sixkiller claims to have seen in the woods on the night of the murder. At the heart of THE FIRE CARRIER is the ancient Cherokee myth of Atsi-dihye'gi', night-walking, torchbearing phantom whose evil power can only be dispelled by a medicine man. Henderson Sixkiller may have been the first to see the floating light, but he will not be the last.

In a driving rain in the woods outside of Buckskin, while searching for his daughter and her two friends, Mitch Bushyhead finds the carcass of an illegally killed bald eagle and a dead man. Sure that the murdered man, a young game warden, was killed by the same person who shot the eagle with an arrow, Mitch eventually focuses his attention on Vian Bradfield. An otherwise respected high-school principal, Bradfield was known to be the supplier of eagle feathers for traditional dances that were growing more popular as men like Vian discovered their Cherokee roots. But for Mitch, the investigation immediately takes a bizarre turn. Even through Vian has been spotted at a gathering of masked dancers, he cannot be found for questioning. With the disappearance of his only suspect, Bushyhead's investigation must delve into Vian's life and a swirl of small-town intrigues around it. From an unhappy marriage to an unhinged old-timer who is making a one-man stand against the United States government, the frayed edges of Buckskin society are revealing to Mitch a host of lies and secrets. And while he struggles to raise a daughter on his own, and to make a fledgling relationship with a woman doctor succeed, Mitch is determined not just to catch a killer, but to unmask a wrong hidden deep in Buckskin's heart.