«Zia Summer» by Rudolfo Anaya

Chicano detective Sonny Baca mines the fertile spiritual terrain of the Southwest in his quest for his cousin’s killerThe great-grandson of a legendary lawman and gunfighter, thirty-year-old Sonny Baca hopes he possesses even a tenth of El Bisabuelo’s courage. But instead of cleaning up New Mexico by hunting down dangerous desperadoes, the struggling PI looks for missing persons and deadbeat husbands. The game changes when his cousin Gloria—the first woman Sonny ever loved—is brutally slain. Her corpse is found drained of blood. A zia sun sign, the symbol on the New Mexican flag, is carved on her stomach.Gloria’s husband, Frank Dominic, a politician making a run for mayor of Albuquerque, has a powerful motive for murder. But Gloria wasn’t the first victim. A year earlier, another woman was slain in the exact same way. Is a serial killer on the loose? Or is this the handiwork of some satanic cult? Feeling his cousin’s spirit crying out for justice, Sonny and his girlfriend, Rita, begin a search that takes them across New Mexico’s polluted South Valley to an environmental compound in the mountains. As Sonny moves closer to the truth, he uncovers a chilling connection between his past and a very real and present evil. Wanted by the FBI, the brujo known as Raven plays mind games and changes shape at will. Will Sonny be able to stop his diabolical plan before the Southwest explodes in a nuclear holocaust?Zia Summer is a thrilling spiritual journey that doesn’t hesitate to ask the big questions.