Ancestral atoms : Turquoise and treachery in the Southwest

There?s a great round turquoise, big as a bear, hidden in a cave on the Pajarito Plateau in New Mexico. What is it? Anthropologist Emma Pastore, leading the Southwest Summer Program,thinks she knows. ?It?s an old story,? she tells her students, as they learn archeology at Bandelier National Monument. But Robert Oppenheimer, finding the turquoise in 1940, had his own ideas. Now, it?s shaping up to be a brittle summer in northern New Mexico. Los Alamos is saturated in paranoia. Nearby, Bandelier, is covered in dry wood and faces the 100-year burn. When the turquoise is rediscovered, Emma is determined to learn as much as possible about its long history and her own, about Oppenheimer and Los Alamos, and about a series of suspicious deaths. She enlists the help of David Tapia, a religious leader and gourmet cook from Santa Lucia Pueblo and Navajo physicist Nelson Benally. They agree that they have two courses of action: they can attempt to repatriate the turquoise, if and when the government is willing to acknowledge its existence. Or they can steal it. With a little bit of humor, magical realism and hope, Emma takes on the current US government. "--