La Vida Segunda: The Second Life

New York surgeon Will McKeen is still recovering from a heart attack when he enters California's Santa Cruz Mountains to begin his early retirement. There he receives a shock. Demented killers are at work among the misty, fog-strewn redwood trees he has dreamed about for years. Less than a mile from his cabin, a 12-year-old boy tramping in a dry creek bed comes across a corpse in a peculiar location. Will argues with the local Sheriff's Deputy over this strange location. How did the body get there?Nearby, a metalsmithing student creates an elaborate funerary urn, which his landlady names ';La Vida Segunda' for its purpose of storing human ashes for the afterlife. As Will sits beside the student, helping him to hand-finish the urn, he becomes drawn into a spell that hangs like woodsmoke over the forest, involving the urn, the local murder, and morea wildflower painter who runs away at night sending a curse into the rainy darkness.Who is the murderer? No one knows but the reader.