ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3)

ICE BURIAL takes place five thousand years ago, but its characters and themes would fit easily into our own world. The novel tells of a potent struggle between conflicting spiritual and cultural beliefs like those that occur today, and the people in its pages behave in ways any of us would recognize. They may not live in houses like ours or fly in planes, but they are as sophisticated as we are and much more in tune with the earth that sustains them. We have a great deal to learn from them, especially about how to live in peace.

Some of the Mother People tribes have moved into the foothills of the Alps now that the ice has retreated, but the memory of the suffering their ancestors endured from the cold and from the brutal men with knives who came south to escape it lingers in their memories. Now they face a different challenge -the appearance of a charismatic man who calls himself the Leader and his sinister brother Korg. Unless the Mother People forsake the Goddess and obey the rules of the Great Spirit, the Leader warns, the great sheets of ice that caused their ancestors such anguish will come again.

His fundamentalist religion imposes restrictions of all kinds, especially on women, whose obedience to the Great Spirit and subservience to the man chosen for them by the Leader are deemed essential to safety. These ideas are foreign to the Mother People; they live by the ways of love and compassion, not fear and retribution, and their leaders have always been women, for like the Goddess, women are givers of life. Still, some Mother People tribes come to believe the message, mesmerized by the Leader€s persuasive voice and commanding manner, and terrified by Korg€s uncanny knowledge of their slightest transgression. They know that his accusing finger pointed at them brings ostracism.

Into this dilemma are thrust Zena, the young woman destined to be the next leader of the Mother People, who is still grieving over the disappearance of her twin sister, and Lief the wanderer who had no roots, no loyalties, until he saw Zena and knew his destiny was intertwined with hers. Together, amidst drama and danger and disasters like the ancient glacial dam that breaks and spills its contents into the village, they struggle to combat the Leader€s message and the power he exerts over his listeners minds - and the puzzling hold Korg has over everyone, even the Leader. Fear is its source, but fear of what? Who are Korg and the Leader, really? Did the old seer who knew them when they were young but was mysteriously murdered speak the truth? Why are so many young women inexplicably disappearing, and who is the unseen stranger watching from the trees?

Zena€s and Lief€s is a love story that will linger long in readers€ hearts and minds, as will the abundance of other memorable characters: Rofina, the beautiful woman whose mind was unbalanced when her newborn child was snatched from her in a deadly ritual; Durak, the man who loves her but cannot forget a shameful act he watched her perform; her sister Mara who must learn that bitterness and revenge exact a terrible price, and their mother Runor, a wise woman who once committed a sin that cannot be forgiven and must commit another to save the people she loves. As the story unfolds, these acts and their often tragic consequences find resolution, but for the reader a further mystery remains until near the end - who is the ice man? Why did he climb so high into the peaks that stormy day? Above all, who killed him and why?