Seven Black Stones

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 carbon monoxide poisoning. While the sheriff wanted to rule it a suicide and close the case, Molly Bearpaw, whose own life had been darkened by suicide, was sure that this was not. So was the teenage daughter of the dead man. And besides, there was the matter of the seven small black stones left in a circle on the seat of Ed Whitekiller’s pick-up truck. Whitekiller had been chronically unemployed and perpetual womanizer. While Molly was suspicious of his angry wife, and his latest lover’s angry husband, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was something other than a crime of passion. And when another dead man was found within shooting distance of Zebediah Smoke’s shack, she knew that seven black stones would be found there, too. Now, she only had to find out why…

Jean Hager’s most masterful work yet, Seven Black Stones captures the confluences of the traditional and the modern forces in contemporary Cherokee life. With its powerful sense of time and place and rich characterizations, this mystery delves into the issues between men and women, lovers and family, that are common to us all, and thatforce Molly Bearpaw to find not only a killer, but the truths of her own life.