Tsegi Ruins: Book 4
Navajo spirits are pushing harder on Katie. They want something from her, yet she’s unsure what it is. They don’t want to kill her otherwise she’d be toast by now. The answer becomes clearer following an all night peyote tipi rite. Rory realizes the tug on Katie might pull her from him, and he ups the ante by marrying his sweetheart. Nonetheless her quest to understand the ravages of disease continues to push her to further her education.
Katie Reynolds is a modern Navajo Indian. They call themselves the Diné. Early in her life Katie was bitten with the bug, the bug to help animals. Hard work and intelligence paid off, she became a veterinarian, a first in her Navajo nation, and fell in love with Rory in veterinary school.
The two lovers managed to overcome turbulent issues during school, but the relationship begins to crack from their cultural and physical distances. They come together for a time in California, where Rory is building a practice. Although he hasn’t intended on going into small animal practice he arranges to open a clinic so both he and Katie have enough work to make a living, build a home.
Katie continues to feel the tug of advanced learning, still hoping to strengthen her people in a land where evilness rampant on the res ran her off.
During the tipi rite she runs into Tal and Pelipe, her Ute friends from a neighboring reservation. Working with Katie they convince Rory to try the peyote ritual. Strange things happened afterwards. The next day during a tour of Hearst Castle malevolent spirits cause a 3,000 year-old statue to jump off a shelf, causing her to collapse and lose time. She recovers in a hospital but cannot recollect events of the entire day.
Worries about marrying Rory emerge from this, as she wonders if the spirits are warning her not to do this. The indecision is compounded when she and Tal go on a road trip to San Francisco, then Davis, where Katie’s post-graduate schooling is starting her on a new quest to more fully understand the ravages of disease and evil in humans and animals.
Realizing the tug on Katie might pull her from him, Rory ups the ante proposing to marry his sweetheart before she returns to school.