Silas Pearson is looking for answers. It's been more than three years since his wife, Penelope de Silva, disappeared while working on a conservation project in Utah's red rock wilderness. Law enforcement authorities have given up hope of finding the adventurous Penelope alive. And some suggest that she may not have vanished into the desert at all, but simply left Silas for another man. Silas moves to Moab, where his wife was last seen, with one purpose: finding his wife, dead or alive. His search takes him into a spectacular wilderness of red rock canyons, soaring mesas, and vertical earth, where he must confront his failures as a husband and his guilt over not being there when Penelope needed him most.

The Slickrock Paradox is the first book in the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries, a series of books that explores an iconic American landscape through an atypical anti-hero who is deeply flawed, reluctant, and yet familiar.

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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Legault does a masterful job of making it all so believable. The human landscape in The Slickrock Paradox is littered with characters that are not what they seem to be, such that even the good guys are suspect, right up until the end. —Rocky Mountain Outlook

A perfect recipe for conflict: big money, business first, abuse of native rights and history, all resulting in murder . . . a skilful story by author Legault and marks a series worth investing your time in. —The Hamilton Spectator

Exciting, dense with literary references, and definitely worth a try . . . Legault's complex new series' start will appeal to conspiracy buffs, outdoors enthusiasts, and literary detectives. —Library Journal

In The Slickrock Paradox, the mysterious Southwest is more than setting; the desert's powerful character holds its own with compelling personalities and a captivating story. The realistic plot makes this book timely—such nefarious undertakings could be, and are, happening just beyond our knowing. —Greer K. Chesher, author, Heart of the Desert Wild: Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, winner of the Utah Book Award for Nonfiction