Spirit Messenger Plot Summary
It is AD 1300. A group of Anasazi villagers are tending crops, while Indian women grind corn, children play and dogs bark, under the warm summer sun in a verdant valley of the American Southwest. Suddenly, a dazzling daystar appears in the sky above them, momentarily outshining the brilliant Southwestern sun. A highly evolved time-traveler from a distant world visits Earth via a time transport. He is a prophetic messenger who views us and our world as an outside observer. He has come to bestow a gift upon mankind that will change the way we view ourselves and our place in the world. But the messenger also brings us a warning, one that tells mankind to choose correctly or suffer the same fate as
another world like our own, his planet of origin.
Because of their superstitions, the Indians receive him as a spirit messenger and a deity from the "Heavens of Fire." Dwelling with them for a time, he learns their language and tells them about the star system where he originated. He also teaches them to use his gateway to other worlds, and he leaves behind a token of his friendship, an unusual gold coin he gives to the tribe's Holy Man for safekeeping, promising his future return.
A major time shift occurs in a historical flash forward to present day, Arizona, Navajo Indian Reservation. The time-traveler, Daniel, returns in the same place, bearing a gift he hopes will benefit mankind. The Anasazi have long since disappeared into the shadows of antiquity. Walking along Navajo Highway 160, that cuts a swath through the 10,000 square miles of primordial red rock, mesas, buttes and expansive desert landscape, the time-traveler meets a rugged, fiercely independent Navajo truck driver who offers him a ride. Daniel saves the
Indian's life through the use of his unique powers, when the Indian is nearly trampled by the herd of cattle he is delivering to a stockyard in Flagstaff, Arizona. But in seeking out those on whom he will bestow his gift, Daniel becomes ensnared in a bizarre double homicide as the primary suspect. The Navajo truck driver, Zachary Thomas, knows the stranger is innocent. He was with him at the ancient Anasazi ruins the night the murders took place. He is also indebted to the enigmatic stranger for saving his life. He is willing to do anything to protect him, even if it means helping him hide from the authorities. In doing so, Zachary becomes a suspected accomplice to the murders, and he feels he must prove his innocence and the stranger's as well. But his efforts only unearth a greater, unholy conspiracy to cover up illegal activity by the Reservation's chief power broker, the Tribal Council Chairman himself, Jack McCloud.
The intrigue reaches a precipice of ultimate danger and no return when Daniel asks the Navajo to bring a female archeologist to the ruins where he is hiding, hoping Tracy Baldwin and a male astronomer friend, Michael Severson can assist him in his mission to deliver his gift before he is discovered by the forces determined to seek him out and destroy him. However, Zachary Thomas has had a past romantic encounter with the seductively intelligent Anglo woman, Tracy Baldwin, and he reluctantly involves her, reigniting their affair in spite of her long-standing relationship with the young, contrastingly intellectual astronomer, Michael Severson, who is perplexed by a side of the young woman he has never seen before and doesn't understand, but is helplessly attracted to.
An epic manhunt ensues on the reservation with the local authorities seeking out the suspected murderer and inadvertently discovering one of their own, the flamboyant Tribal Council Chairman, Jack McCloud is involved. In order to cover up the crime and avert possible political fallout, the police detective in charge of the investigation, Lemuel Red Feather, who is an old friend and political ally, vows to protect the chairman's good name at any cost, even if it means terminating the stranger before he can be exonerated. Zachary Thomas, the two scientists and an old Navajo crystal gazer, White Horse--an old family friend of the young Navajo--who is in possession of the original gold coin, protected and mysteriously handed down through generations by the Anasazi Holy Man, come to the aid of the one they now call The-One-of-Many-Faces, in an attempt to help him escape. But they have only succeeded in buying time for the time-traveler to deliver his message and his benevolent gift. The forces determined to eradicate him, before he can complete his mission and dramatically alter the course of human history, are growing stronger. The struggle between good and evil, man and nature, and human nature, brings all these forces to bear in a magnificently written story, an epic tale of truth and something higher than ourselves. It reveals our sense of aloneness and vulnerability within a staggeringly boundless universe, and our innate need to believe in a greater power.
It is AD 1300. A group of Anasazi villagers are tending crops, while Indian women grind corn, children play and dogs bark, under the warm summer sun in a verdant valley of the American Southwest. Suddenly, a dazzling daystar appears in the sky above them, momentarily outshining the brilliant Southwestern sun. A highly evolved time-traveler from a distant world visits Earth via a time transport. He is a prophetic messenger who views us and our world as an outside observer. He has come to bestow a gift upon mankind that will change the way we view ourselves and our place in the world. But the messenger also brings us a warning, one that tells mankind to choose correctly or suffer the same fate as
another world like our own, his planet of origin.
Because of their superstitions, the Indians receive him as a spirit messenger and a deity from the "Heavens of Fire." Dwelling with them for a time, he learns their language and tells them about the star system where he originated. He also teaches them to use his gateway to other worlds, and he leaves behind a token of his friendship, an unusual gold coin he gives to the tribe's Holy Man for safekeeping, promising his future return.
A major time shift occurs in a historical flash forward to present day, Arizona, Navajo Indian Reservation. The time-traveler, Daniel, returns in the same place, bearing a gift he hopes will benefit mankind. The Anasazi have long since disappeared into the shadows of antiquity. Walking along Navajo Highway 160, that cuts a swath through the 10,000 square miles of primordial red rock, mesas, buttes and expansive desert landscape, the time-traveler meets a rugged, fiercely independent Navajo truck driver who offers him a ride. Daniel saves the
Indian's life through the use of his unique powers, when the Indian is nearly trampled by the herd of cattle he is delivering to a stockyard in Flagstaff, Arizona. But in seeking out those on whom he will bestow his gift, Daniel becomes ensnared in a bizarre double homicide as the primary suspect. The Navajo truck driver, Zachary Thomas, knows the stranger is innocent. He was with him at the ancient Anasazi ruins the night the murders took place. He is also indebted to the enigmatic stranger for saving his life. He is willing to do anything to protect him, even if it means helping him hide from the authorities. In doing so, Zachary becomes a suspected accomplice to the murders, and he feels he must prove his innocence and the stranger's as well. But his efforts only unearth a greater, unholy conspiracy to cover up illegal activity by the Reservation's chief power broker, the Tribal Council Chairman himself, Jack McCloud.
The intrigue reaches a precipice of ultimate danger and no return when Daniel asks the Navajo to bring a female archeologist to the ruins where he is hiding, hoping Tracy Baldwin and a male astronomer friend, Michael Severson can assist him in his mission to deliver his gift before he is discovered by the forces determined to seek him out and destroy him. However, Zachary Thomas has had a past romantic encounter with the seductively intelligent Anglo woman, Tracy Baldwin, and he reluctantly involves her, reigniting their affair in spite of her long-standing relationship with the young, contrastingly intellectual astronomer, Michael Severson, who is perplexed by a side of the young woman he has never seen before and doesn't understand, but is helplessly attracted to.
An epic manhunt ensues on the reservation with the local authorities seeking out the suspected murderer and inadvertently discovering one of their own, the flamboyant Tribal Council Chairman, Jack McCloud is involved. In order to cover up the crime and avert possible political fallout, the police detective in charge of the investigation, Lemuel Red Feather, who is an old friend and political ally, vows to protect the chairman's good name at any cost, even if it means terminating the stranger before he can be exonerated. Zachary Thomas, the two scientists and an old Navajo crystal gazer, White Horse--an old family friend of the young Navajo--who is in possession of the original gold coin, protected and mysteriously handed down through generations by the Anasazi Holy Man, come to the aid of the one they now call The-One-of-Many-Faces, in an attempt to help him escape. But they have only succeeded in buying time for the time-traveler to deliver his message and his benevolent gift. The forces determined to eradicate him, before he can complete his mission and dramatically alter the course of human history, are growing stronger. The struggle between good and evil, man and nature, and human nature, brings all these forces to bear in a magnificently written story, an epic tale of truth and something higher than ourselves. It reveals our sense of aloneness and vulnerability within a staggeringly boundless universe, and our innate need to believe in a greater power.