Talk of ghosts sweeps through the camp, and everyone seems uneasy. Tay-bodal's best friend, the prophetic shaman Skywalker, disappears after warning of danger. The mood becomes even more disquieting when the herd boys tell a story of a woman turning into a raven, and two prized horses are found slaughtered, their throats cut.

Red Bird, a man who claims the power of a shaman without having been accepted as one, convinces many of the tribe that there is witchcraft at work. Tay-bodal believes him to be an arrogant and dangerous fake, and worries where this will lead. Then a young woman dies, the cause mysterious, and it seems that everyone in the camp is keeping secrets. Tay-bodal's newfound happiness is threatened, and he must use his native curiosity and well-honed investigative skills to uncover the pattern in seemingly unconnected threads in order to set things right.

Mardi Oakley Medawar is a masterful story teller, and Witch of the Palo Duro is told in a compelling voice. The characters are real, individual, and very human. The setting and the culture come to life. I was amazed at how easy it was to slip into the narrator's mind and see things from his point of view. When one of the characters, an adopted member of the tribe, is described as having strange sky-colored eyes and pale hair, I felt the oddness of it.

This is an intriguing mystery wrapped in an intricate narrative of everyday life in a different place and time; an integral part of it, but far from the whole. I was interested in what was going on and how events were going to tie together, but I was equally interested in the details of the life and people. Tay-bodal tells his story with a great deal of wit and humor; just settle back and let him draw you in –

"I remember the last peaceful autumn my people, the Kiowa, knew as a free nation. Like something tangible, I hold the memory tightly in my heart, reliving each and every precious moment again and again. The Baptist preaching man talks to us all the time about heaven. To be back in those lost days of 1866, when I was a relatively young man, newly married, our nation at liberty to come and go as it pleased, to be there again with those I loved, that is my notion of heaven."

--Jeri Wright