The riveting first novel in the thrilling series featuring wildlife ranger Nick Drake from award-winning author Dwight Holing. In the unforgiving silence of the high desert, a killer is turning gullies into graves.Nick Drake returned from Vietnam with a boxful of medals and a duffle bag packed with demons. Trained to kill but left to find his own way back into society, he flees to the High Lonesome of Eastern Oregon in search of a hard-won peace. As a wildlife ranger patrolling the vast, isolated refuges there, he expects his biggest conflicts to be stray cattle and low-level poachers. Then he finds the body.Deep in a sunbaked gully, a young girl has been ritually murdered and meticulously placed. The horrific discovery shatters Nick's illusion of sanctuary, plunging him back into humanity's heart of darkness. To stop a calculating killer from turning the desert gullies into a graveyard, Nick must weaponize the very instincts he's trying to escape. But in a pitiless territory where the heat sears and the silence judges, tracking a predator means confronting the darkness within himself.What readers are saying:★★★★★ "Smart, thrilling, beautifully written page-turners. A stunning love song to a remote land."★★★★★ "Prose that crackles like the unforgiving setting, building to a climax as powerful as a force of nature."★★★★★ "A masterful blend of high desert realism and deep respect for Native American culture, lore, and mysticism."★★★★★ "Perfect for fans of C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, and Anne Hillerman.."★★★★★ "Nick Drake is wonderfully complex, gritty, and straight to the heart. A man to run the river of life with!"