Silas Pearson is plagued by nightmares. In them, his wife, Penelope, who has now been missing for four years, shows him where murder victims are buried across the Colorado Plateau. One such dream leads him to the Atlas Mill tailings site, outside Moab, Utah. There, Silas discovers the corpse of anti-uranium-mining activist Jane Vaughn, who went missing from Flagstaff, Arizona, buried in radioactive waste. Trying to connect the murder with the disappearance of his wife, who was friends with Vaughn, Silas travels across the Southwest to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He confronts a host of suspects who wanted Jane Vaughn dead and who believed Penelope, too, was interfering with progress on the plateau. All the while, Silas’s nightmares, threaded with snatches of prose from the writings of Edward Abbey, seem to be leading him to some final confrontation—but with what?

This is the second book in the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries, all of which are set in the American Southwest—around Arches, Canyonlands, and Grand Canyon National Parks, and the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

Stephen Legault is a full-time conservation activist, writer, photographer, and organizational development consultant. He is the author of a number of historical and environmentally themed mysteries, including The End of the Line and The Third Riel Conspiracy, featuring Durrant Wallace, a sergeant with the North West Mounted Police in the late 1800s; The Slickrock Paradox, a Red Rock Canyon Mystery set in Utah's Canyonlands region; and The Vanishing Track and The Glacier Gallows, the most recent mysteries featuring Cole Blackwater, an environmentalist who finds himself solving crimes. Stephen is also the author of Carry Tiger to Mountain: The Tao of Activism and Leadership, which he wrote based on his experience using the Tao Te Ching as a guide to his lifelong work to protect wilderness and wildlife, and Running Toward Stillness, a meditation on Buddhist spiritual practice, running, and parenthood. He is currently working on new books of photography, essays on spirituality, and more mystery novels. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, with his wife, Jenn, and two children, Rio and Silas. Visit Stephen online at stephenlegault.com and follow him on Twitter at @StephenLegault.

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"Black Sun Descending reminds us of something that too many people have either forgotten, or never known in the first place: Decades of uranium mining in the desert Southwest not only poisoned the Navajo Reservation, but also despoiled the Grand Canyon ... Given its real-life backdrop, this environmentally conscious mystery is both educational and intriguing, and Pearson’s search for his wife’s body is emotionally affecting." —Mystery Scene Magazine

"A superbly crafted mystery from beginning to end, Black Sun Descending… continue[s] to document Stephen Legault's total mastery of the genre . . . Replete with unexpected twists and surprising turns, it is very highly recommended." —Midwest Book Review

"Legault’s character development and landscape depiction is exquisite, completely immersing you in the heat and dust and sights and smells of the desert. His plotting has become more intricate and enticing with each book . . . and Black Sun Descending . . . leaves us with one crime still unsolved, Penelope’s whereabouts still unknown, and a hunger for the final book to reveal all.." —Rocky Mountain Outlook