Sleepy Benteen County, Kansas, turns frantic on election day. The radical religious right is out to unseat Sheriff English, better known as Englishman, after his deputy accidentally rammed into a school bus carrying the Benteen County teen choir.

Englishman’s brother, Mad Dog, a born-again Cheyenne, rushes back from a quest in the Black Hills with a premonition that the sheriff is in serious danger. The sheriff’s daughters, too, wake with similar fears and cut their college classes to hurry home.

Then, a student smuggles a gun into the school and begins shooting and taking hostages. And Englishman still needs to clear up one little thing about his deputy’s accident: Benteen County doesn’t have a teen choir.

It’s enough to make a sheriff wonder why he wants to serve another term.

On a bleak Christmas morning, Sewa Tribal Police Officer Heather English patrols a desolate canyon on the Arizona reservation. Back in Kansas, her father, the sheriff of Benteen County, is lonely enough with no family around to go in to work at his office. On the way, Sheriff English calms a wild incident in a church parking lot. Then he hears of a death threat. The crèche, at the center of the town’s largest holiday yard display, has been desecrated, and its owner plans to kill the neighbors he suspects are responsible.

To keep their husband and father home, his family gives the sheriff the man’s guns and promises not to let him make trouble. Soon the county fills with rumors that the sheriff is systematically violating Second Amendment rights and seizing every weapon. A local militia turns out, locked and loaded and ready to do whatever it takes to stop him.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Heather stumbles on the newly elected governor, newly murdered. A note explains that his death is part of a drug war, and his killer promises Heather that she will be among the victims. Her Uncle Mad Dog, a Cheyenne wannabe shaman, is involved. Someone thinks Mad Dog is a drug lord and sends him a last minute gift—a severed human hand.

Careful police work, a little Cheyenne magic, and maybe a Christmas miracle are needed to restore peace on earth. One slip, however, will mean that Mad Dog, Sheriff English, and Heather will rest in peace—eternally.

As spring bursts forth, so does a whole lot more, including murder by arrow, in quiet Benteen County, Kansas. Nothing ever happens here. Then, on a perfect spring morning, a member of the TV crew filming in the area dies with a Cheyenne arrow in his back. A prime suspect is Sheriff English’s brother, Mad Dog, the county oddball whose American Indian heritage has produced a born-again Cheyenne.

While murder is a bad way to start the day, bombs don’t improve it. Notes left for authorities hint at a terrorist assault on the heartland. As if the sheriff, known as Englishman, doesn’t have enough to worry about, his wife has begun acting strangely. She insists he fly off for a Paris holiday with her before sunset–or else.

As Mad Dog swings between suspect and target, he encounters not only his long-lost high school sweetheart but also a secret that just may explain the unlikely mix of arrows and bombs.

It’s Murphy’s Law squared, as Mad Dog and his pet wolf, Hailey, test a shaman’s powers and Englishman struggles to balance his duties to family and community. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy.

Attending the Yaqui tribe’s Easter ceremonies in Tucson should have been a dream come true for a Cheyenne wannabe shaman like Mad Dog. But, Mad Dog is accused of being a witch. Moments later, a policeman is murdered and Mad Dog is blamed. Mad Dog’s niece, Heather English, a part-time deputy for her father in Kansas, combs Tucson’s mean streets to arrange a peaceful surrender or to clear her uncle’s name by finding the real killer. Meanwhile, someone has blown Mad Dog’s house off the face of the Great Plains. Sheriff English investigates that crime and acts as a long-distance go-between for Arizona law enforcement and his daughter and brother. Is this crime somehow linked to Mad Dog’s recent activity with an online role-playing game?

Murder is unthinkable to the People–a Paleolithic tribe migrating across Alaska and becoming some of the first undocumented immigrants to enter the Americas. For them, murder isn’t merely tragic, it’s forbidden. Murder poisons the entire tribe and puts it at odds with nature, the Spirits, and the mighty Earth Mother. A murderer must be found and removed in order to put the world back in balance.

Raven is the aging Spirit Man to a band in which a member has been strangled with a garrote. Worse, evidence of witchcraft is linked to the killing–another terrible violation of the People’s covenant with the Earth Mother and the Spirits. Raven isn’t a Spirit Man because of sacredly held beliefs. He holds the position because his band needed someone to do so, and because he needed to secure his place among them. Now the agnostic Spirit Man begins having dreams in which a stranger holds Raven’s skull in his hands, and a woman claiming to be the Earth Mother–accepted by many followers–declares that only Raven can solve the crimes and restore the People to harmony. How will a man who doubts the authenticity of this goddess satisfy her demands? What if she and the dreams are real and successfully solving the crimes will result in Raven’s imminent death? An impossible situation becomes even harder as Raven finds it increasingly likely the young woman he’s falling in love with must be the guilty party.