A-Z Wednesday from Reading at the Beach

Good Morning! Welcome to my portion of A-Z Wednesday brought to you by Reading at the Beach.

This week's letter is "P."

To play, simply scan your shelves and piles of books to find a title starting with the letter "P." Post a picture, the title, synopsis, a link to the book (from amazon, etc), and post your link on Vicki's Blog in her A-Z Wednsday Post. Have fun finding an old friend or maybe something you've been meaning to read, but had forgotten for a time...

People of the Lakes by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear.

I love this series of books. The Gears are a husband/wife team; she - a former archaeologist for the U.S. Department of the Interior, and he - the principle investigator for his own archaeological firm. Their books start with a short introduction (10-20 pages) to the "present day" site of the book (this one is a ranger trying to save old "mounds" from destruction by a new federal highway grant). Then the real story begins... the gears take real facts known from archaeology and create a story around the prehistoric peoples and their daily lives that created whatever is still left in present day. This historical fiction involves a people of Mound Builders fighting over a totem mask in the Great Lakes Region of the U.S. as the heroine attempts to destroy the cursed mask and vengeful clan members attempt to kill her.

Technically, this is the 6th book in the "People Books" series, but each can be read as a stand alone. I read People of the Sea first and this one second. Until today, I thought I had read all of the "People Books" but now know I need to find Thunder, Weeping Eye, and Nightland.

Now although, I thought these books were great, I bought a couple of other books written by Kathleen O'Neal Gear in the past couple of years and after starting the first had to get rid of the whole stack - so my caution would be, make sure you read the back of the book before you buy it! (I'm guilty of skipping that part regularly.)