The Spirit and the Skull

This thought-provoking standalone from Hayes (The Grey Pilgrim) takes the reader back to Paleolithic times. The People are crossing the Bering land bridge, on the threshold of the new country that their goddess, the Mother, has promised them. One band’s trek south is interrupted, however, by murder and hints of witchcraft. It’s up to Raven, the band’s middle-aged Spirit Man, to identify the criminal—a task complicated by his attraction to the most obvious suspect, Down, who’s on the verge of womanhood. Further exacerbating uneasy tribal politics is the direct intervention of the Mother, who insists that the natural balance can be restored only if the murderer is punished immediately. Meanwhile, Raven has disturbing visions of the future, when humans have done their best to defeat nature and he’s just a hollow skull on a lab table. Mildly interesting as a mystery, the novel is more impressive in evoking an alien world when humans lived in tune with their surroundings. [em](Aug.) [/em]