Jeff Lee

Mato-Sa Jeff Lee

Disillusioned with police work and with life in general, Karl Myers heads west in 1955 in search of his wife, Laura Benton, who was last reported to be living in Port Townsend, Washington. In North Dakota during the trip west, serendipity deposits Myers in the midst of a prison break, and he captures an escapee named Mato-Sa; fate also reunites Myers with Reginald Rhodes, a marine brother he first met in 1942 at Montford Point, where Myers was a D. I. for the first African-Americans recruited into the Marines during World War II; Rhodes joins Myers on the trek to P. T. As have others before them, Myers and Rhodes work at the Town Tavern in P. T. in exchange for a bunk upstairs. In the days that follow, Myers and Rhodes begin to grow roots and relationships in their new town where the US Marshal's Service has placed Mato-Sa in an extra-procedural, witness protection situation. Myers becomes immersed in solving murders that have chilling connections to Mato-Sa, Laura, and to Mirabelle Charles, a Native American woman with whom Reggie falls in love. Myers' greatest personal challenges involve reconciling has enduring love for Laura with her bigamy-she has married a wealthy Seattle Surgeon-and in dealing with the discovery that he and Laura have a seventeen-year-old son: Bill Benton.