STONE BOY

The murder of rancher Albert Gates shortly after he paid Will True Sky $500 for a sacred medicine bag that the Lakota man had found on Gates's land brings civil-rights lawyer Nate Rosen (The Love That Kills, The Wisdom of Serpents) to Bear Coat, South Dakota, where he finds Will's family—especially his stubborn father Saul True Sky and his half-breed sister Grace Jenkins—locked in a feud with Gates's widow Belle and the town fathers, who want to confiscate a piece of land Saul owns in order to open an Old West theme park in neighboring Tin Town. One skeleton too many in the Bear Coat closet and an overextended finale keep this out of the class of Rosen's first two cases—but nobody rivals Levitsky's ability to get you to care about people who turn out to be weaker, greedier, and sadder than you ever imagined.