The Summer of the Dragon (1979)

                                           Turquoise at the Dreaming Goddess, your home for stones

Listening: Mama Can't Buy You Love

Caught between spending the summer with her lovable but aggravating family or taking on a vaguely-described job with a billionaire in Arizona, fledgling anthropologist D.J. Abbott chooses the latter. But gentle, benevolent Hank Hunnicutt has a propensity for wild conspiracy theories, a pack of conmen living in his luxurious mansion, and a mysterious discovery out in the desert he won't talk about. And when he disappears, it's only D.J., Hank's sarcastic secretary Mike, and one or two others who take it seriously enough to be alarmed...What is it, exactly, out there in the desert that someone would resort to such lengths to hide?

Summer is a fun one, with a charming heroine (she's funny, self-aware, friendly, and unabashedly loves good food), a great little romance, a good set of characters, and an entertaining mystery.

Set in the heat of an Arizona summer, it evokes the atmosphere really well, peppering stories about snakes and turquoise with tales of Diné tradition and long-lost mines. It's...a little insensitive, with the local Native American populace restricted to working as staff on Hank' ranch. Although, to be fair, siblings Juan and Debbie get depth and character, as a premed student and Hank's clever, lovely love interest. 

The archaeological/historical premise around which this novel is built it not a usual one for MPM, focusing as it does on prehistory. I can't I'm particularly interested in prehistory, but I liked the notion that this is a kind of buried treasure we don't always think of.

Rating: ****

 

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