Shadow Cast

A suspicious death, stolen water rights, and a web of deceit at a clandestine winery create a deadly concoction for a small Oregon reservation in this new thriller from award-winning mystery author Deborah J Ledford.

When Tacoma, Washington, police officer Baylee Leclair receives the call everyone dreads—that her mother has died—she races to the Kanaasea Confederated Tribes Reservation near the Oregon coast. However, as soon as she arrives, Baylee gets the run around from the tribal police as to the cause of Ida Pearce's death and finds few answers about where her body was found. Frustrated, Baylee engages her cop training to unofficially investigate the cause of her mother’s untimely demise.

Baylee knows that, as an outsider to the people she had turned her back on fourteen years ago, she’ll need allies if she’s going to get anywhere with this investigation. But she must also be careful about who she confides in. She forms a reluctant pact with her half-brother Mica Pearce and her childhood friend, Oscar Hubbard, who is now a lieutenant for the tribal police force. When their investigations uncover discrepancies within Ida’s records as the lead accountant and bookkeeper for the tribal community that seem tied to a suspiciously successful vineyard that borders the reservation, Baylee will have to dig even deeper to clear her mother’s name of wrongdoing.