The award-winning author of The Grandfather Medicine introduces Molly Bearpaw, an investigator for the Cherokee Tribe, who looks into a mysterious case of botulism in a local nursing home. She is also asked to verify that the victim's heart was not stolen by a ravenmocker--a Cherokee witch. In sorting through the means and motives for the murder, Molly enters a deadly race for time.

"The redbird is the daughter of the Sun. And if she had been brought home safely, the people could have brought back their friends from the ghost country..". The tale of the redbird explains the origin of death in Cherokee myth, and it is a story intricately woven into the rich fabric of this remarkable new Molly Bearpaw mystery. Following the acclaimed debut work in this series, Ravenmocker, The Redbird's Cry solidifies the reputation of Jean Hager, a veteran writer drawing upon a unique contemporary setting and featuring a resilient new heroine. It is autumn in Oklahoma. The woods are...

"The Apportioner sees what's going on over there and she don't like it. When she gets mad enough, she'll send a punishment, like she did in the old days. Lot of people are going to die". The words were spoken by Zebediah Smoke, whose ramshackle property bordered the Cherokee Nation's new, half-completed bingo hall. Zeb's listeners, his great-nephew and a retired professor who had come to record the old man's stories for posterity, could dismiss his rantings as an old man's melodrama. But in a matter of days Zeb's words seemed to come true. The first victim was found in his garage, dead of...

In this novel Molly Bearpaw investigates the murder of a woman who tried to communicate with the soul of a dead Cherokee. But before she can declare the case closed, she must face some difficult truths about her own family.

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,...