Truth & Bright Water

the long version

"This summer for Tecumseh and Lum, two young Native men coming of age, will be a summer of mysteries and returns. It opens with a distraught woman throwing things into the river out of a suitcase - then jumping in after. Tecumseh and Lum go to help, but she and her truck have disappeared. On the bluff overlooking the river, Tecumseh's dog discovers a child's skull. Other mysteries also puzzle Tecumseh - if his mom will take his dad back; if his rolling-stone Auntie Cassie is home to stay this time, and why she's brought a suitcase full of baby clothes; why no one protects Lum from his father's rages.". "Then Tecumseh gets a job helping an artist - Monroe Swimmer, Bright Water's most famous son, returned home and living in a vacant church - with the project of a lifetime. As the tourists - buckskin-clad Germans, drunk Americans, and a ghostly little Cherokee girl from Georgia - begin to arrive for the annual Indian Days festival, the secrets of Truth and Bright Water come together in a climax of tragedy, reconciliation, and love."--BOOK JACKET.