Ten years after leaving small town life for the big city, Joe Lakota has returned to his Oregon hometown to raise his son and romance a woman he loved long ago.
When a young Cherokee tribal lawyer comes to the door to claim Taylor's illegally adopted Indian daughter, the white woman must face the fact that her stable life is about to be torn apart. The story follows her and six-year-old Turtle across the West as they flee from the threat of separation and exist on minimum-wage earnings. Meanwhile, Taylor's mother, Alice, leaves her second husband and goes to stay with her cousin in Heaven, Oklahoma. There she meets Cash, a full-blooded Cherokee, who has been living outside the reservation, but yearns to return to his roots. The richness of Indian tribal life is seen through the eyes of Cash, Alice, and Annawake Fourkiller, the lawyer.
The adopted daughter of the most powerful man in town, Schyler Crandall left Heaven, Louisiana, a brokenhearted girl. Now a crisis has brought her home to a family in conflict, a logging empire on the brink of disaster, and seething secrets that make Heaven hotter than hell. Still there are her beautiful younger sister, Tricia, with her cruel lies...Ken, Tricia's handsome husband, who married the wrong sister...Jigger, the pimp and ruffian with plans of his own...and Cash, proud, mysterious, and complex. It is dangerous for Schyler to even be near him, yet she must dare to confront the past - if there is to be any peace in Heaven.
A twelve-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of North Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder---four men who know exactly who William and Annie are, and who know exactly where their desperate mother is waiting for news of her children's fate. Retired cops from Los Angeles, the killers easily persuade the inexperienced sheriff to let them lead the search for the missing children.
