"Grave Dirt" begins when a lay brother (Brother Frankie) discovers a Spanish doubloon in the garden behind the Cathedral in Belize City. He unwittingly helps an Obeah Man (Ras Jonny) put a fix on the garden and finds more coins. Ras Jonny proceeds to poison a priest, sell the coins, and force Frankie to go with him to the Maya Mountains to work in an unsavory camp harvesting medicinal plants for the pharmaceutical industry. Frankie's cousin (Brian Banister and wife Mondie Marlow) find out he's missing and travel to Belize to find him. At Camp Harpy Eagle Ras Jonny clashes with the supervisor and buries a black sock stuffed with feathers in his doorway to kill him. Brian and Mondie track Brother Frankie to Camp Harpy Eagle and help him escape to a local village church. They accidently meet a long-time friend (Professor Shelly Kelly) and her Creole student (Chantal Morgan) working at Camp Balam-an ecologically-conscious alternative to Camp Harpy Eagle. As the story unfolds Ras Jonny is executed for something he didn't do; an Obeah Man (Jarret) kills a rival a Myal Man (Fitzroy) with scrapings from Golden Poison Dart Frog; and the supervisor at Camp Harpy Eagle is dispatched with cyanide capsules by an unknown assailant. After Shelly and her friends attend a Myal ceremony in the village of Cave Creek Shelly develops a plan to end the practice of Obeahism; stop the destruction of the forests by outsiders; and help preserve native traditions throughout the region. As they prepare to execute the plan Shelly begins to wrestle with her conscience over the ethics of what they're doing. She wonders how she can justify interfering with the lives of the villagers in such an unprecedented way. Should she go forward? She knows if her plan fails it will almost certainly harm the very people she's trying to help.
About the Author: Duane Anderson was trained as a southwestern archaeologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder (PhD 1972). He spent 20 years in Iowa, serving as director of the Sanford Museum and Planetarium, and later as State Archaeologist of Iowa at the University of Iowa. He later served as executive director of the Dayton Museum of Natural History before taking the position of vice president at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2000 Anderson became the director of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture in Santa Fe. Anderson has published over a hundred papers and books in the fields of archaeology, ethnohistory, paleontology, and museum studies, and has received four awards for his non-fiction books. When he retired Anderson started writing fiction based on his travels and personal experiences. Anderson is currently a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Research Associate at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe.