Blackening Song is the debut of Navajo FBI agent Ella Clah, who returns to the reservation to investigate the murder of her father, a minister. The ritual nature of the killing makes Ella's brother, a medicine man, the prime suspect. Without cooperation from the tribe, the FBI, or the local police, Ella must plumb the depths of the struggle between traditionalist and modernist forces among the Navajo to find her father's murderer.

What did the dead man know? Jimmy Blacksheep, a Navajo member of the New Mexico National Guard recently returned from Iraq, is killed in what appears to be a carjacking gone wrong. But when Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah receives a mysterious package in the mail, she begins to suspect that Jimmyś death is part of something larger. Ella finds she must use Navajo lore, not FBI cryptography, to decode Jimmyś message. Tantalizing clues...

When Navajo healers and members of the Plant Watchers society report that healing plants sacred to the Navajo are disappearing from the Rez, the tribal council asks Rose to catalog the plants and their growing places. She faces strong opposition from hataaliis reluctant to reveal their secret herb-gathering spots and from people who think the Rez should cultivate genetically engineered plants instead of native species. Rose finds evidence that many...

FBI agent Andrew Thomas has disappeared after interrupting a Navajo ritual being performed by a group of medicine men or hataaliis. Navajo Police Special Investigator Ella Clah is assigned to the case over the objections of Thomas's supervisor, who unfavorably recalls Ella's time with the FBI and believes her to have received special treatment because she is Native American. Determined to find the missing man, Ella studies Thomas's latest case-a fraud...

Ella Clah, an investigator with the tribal police, is overwhelmed with suspects when a series of murders claims the lives of some of the Navajo people's most revered wise men, and with a dearth of clues, she must rely on her instincts to flush out the real killer.