Showing Desert Cut by Betty Webb

While scouting locations for a film documentary on Arizona’s Apache Wars, private investigator Lena Jones and Oscar-winning director Warren Quinn discover the mutilated body of a young girl. The gruesome manner of the child’s death evokes memories of Lena’s own rough childhood.

Despite clashing with the local law, Lena investigates the child’s death and uncovers a small town with a big secret. Los Perdidos is not the Eden it first appears. Founded by the descendants of pioneers who fought Geronimo, it now holds a significant population of documented and undocumented foreign-born residents who live and work in Los Perididos at a modern plant. Lena senses a sinister force at work in the town—but where?

The still vivid memory of Geronimo’s war mixes with the modern immigration war and the hard life on the Arizona/Mexico border contrasts with Hollywood’s slick production meetings.

When two more girls disappear from Los Perdidos, Lena is tempted to implement some frontier justice of her own to battle a cruel and ancient practice.