There seemed to be no other conclusion to draw: injuries to the young woman's face appeared to be consistent only with a mauling by a bear. So why did Calhoun stay on the case as if it were a manhunt?

Maddie had been working as a field assistant on one of New England's most important early colonial sites-a place where French pioneers had settled and perished in 1604, and English Quakers followed in 1655, their fate a deeper mystery.

For Jessica, sister of the deceased, arriving in Maine from Oxford it was a heartbreaking journey to collect the remains of the willful little sister she had watched over since their mother's death so many years before. Currently Maddie had traced their mother's Native American roots to this remote spot in Maine, and Jessica now also had to prise Maddie's daughter Freya away from the Souriquois reservation where she seemed to be transforming into a very different nine-year-old altogether. What Jessica finds in New England is a police investigation which is not only tracking bears and picking over 300-year-old settlers' bones, but also is soon to be finding its way through tribal traditions and shape-shifting shamans