Bitterroot Blues

Sam Arceneaux has problems. He's a lawyer, but got his license suspended for doing what he still thinks was the right thing. He's half Indian—Salish father,white mother—and not sure which side he belongs on. He's in love with a beautiful, bullheaded woman. He has a young son from a failed marriage, doesn't see him enough, and feels guilty about that. He works now as a private investigator, under the umbrella of another lawyer in the western Montana town of Missoula. It's a living, sort of, but the work, mostly nasty divorces, makes him want to take a lot of showers. When Delbert Marks, a pastor from a fundamentalist community in the Bitterroot Valley south of Missoula, offers him a good-sized retainer to clear his brother Arden of a murder charge, Arceneaux takes it, even though it seems hopeless. It still beats staking out motels, and in his quest to find a murderer, he also takes a step toward finding himself.