One day, the Great Spirit brought all creation together. . . “I want to hide something from our people until they are ready to learn.” “What is it?” he was asked.

“The knowledge that people create their own reality.”

Daisy O’Connor knows about creating her own reality. With a mother who drug her along like a rag doll from husband to husband, she had to become self-sufficient. Then, when husband number whatever, Running Bear, beat Daisy unconscious, Daisy and her mother left the Lakota reservation far behind. Then her mother left Daisy far behind, in Atlanta with her aunt while her mother moved with husband six to Germany.

No one wanted the young Daisy on the rez – not a pale skinned, redheaded, full-blooded Irish girl. But when her adopted grandfather, Charlie Tall Tree, calls her back to the rez to help her step-brother Eddie, how can she refuse the man who was so kind to her all those years ago? And Eddie himself, the other half of their mismatched pair, “bound together by a marriage between her full-blooded Irish mother and his full-blooded Lakota father.” Eddie was always her friend, even when the other children made her life a misery. So, the Jimmy Choo wearing, southern-speaking Daisy finds herself back in South Dakota on the Piney Creek. In-and-out. Find Eddie. Solve whatever problem he has gotten himself in this time. Get back to Atlanta and her catering business. Easy-peasy.

Well, not so much.

What Daisy finds isn’t simple. Or nice and clean, cut and dried. Instead, she finds her much loved Eddie, but he is strange and distant, showing up to beg for her help, then disappearing just as quickly without explanation or goodbye. Only a warning.

“He killed Father . . . and now he’s poisoning the rez.”

The “He” is apparently Kurt Jessup, owner of the Blue Dog Trading Post, rich man and aspirant mayor of Whittier, South Dakota. And if Daisy is going to find out what is going on, and why Eddie is so certain Jessup is ‘poisoning’ the Piney Creek, she is going to have to get close to Jessup. But getting close could cost more than Daisy ever expected.

I have to thank Ms. Sanders for writing such a realistic view of life on the rez. Being half Quapaw, I have walked my share of rez lands, and seen the deep poverty, the depression, alcoholism and lack of hope. The white people (of which I am half, admittedly) pushed the natives onto the poorest lands possible, where no crops will grow. Schools and medical facilities are nearly nonexistent, as is hope. But often alcohol and drugs are in easy supply, as they are on the Piney Creek in Sanders’ book.

The mystery in the book is very well written, and the characters are well designed. As this is the first in what I see will be a series (I see the next book is in development, “Dead Men Can’t Dance”) and I am excited to read that one as well. The only thing I found wanting in the book was proper editing. There were a plethora of grammatical errors and a few errors of logic and continuity. Other than that, a very satisfying book.

Oh. And the Chocolate Cola Cake with Pecan Glaze? GOTTA try that!!!

I received this book from ReadingAlley.com in exchange for a realistic review. All thoughts are my own.