Raven Talks Back — Beth Anderson

Raven Morressey is living the good life. Nice home, husband, three healthy children, and it's finally summertime, when life is again lovely in Valdez, Alaska. All this explodes one morning when builders, digging up her back yard, uncover a recently murdered headless, handless female body covered with scarification-hundreds of colored designs cut into the skin to resemble tattoos. As if this isn't enough, where the corpse's head should have been is a large rock with a face painted on that resembles an Alaska Native mask. Raven's eight year old son, Timmy, is the first one to see the body and is suddenly unable to walk or respond in any way. On that same day, Raven hears the voice of her long dead Athabascan father coming from Timmy, who is unaware of the ancient hunting chants he sings in his sleep and the words he suddenly speaks in Raven's native tongue-a language he does not know. Jack O'Banion, Valdez's Chief of Police for the past few years, faced with his first murder case in Valdez, begins his official investigation. Everywhere he goes he finds nothing but deception. The town seems to have closed into itself and nobody will tell him anything that might help him solve this case. Then one murder quickly morphs into two, and then three, and the Alaska State Troopers are hot on his back to find the killer now. Between Raven's voices and the visions she develops, and Jack, whose career as well as his contented life in Valdez are on the line, they both feel they have to find the killer and restore some sanity to the town-not to mention their own lives, which are quickly unraveling out of control.