Pecos Valley

It's the "Roaring '20s," but you wouldn't know the era was roaring if you lived in southeastern New Mexico. Except for the occasional "flicker" at the local motion-picture palace, it might as well be 1883 as 1923. When young Annabelle Blue's eccentric aunt Minnie begins complaining about ghosts in her home, poor Annabelle is sent out to Minnie's isolated ranch house to aunt-sit. She's not happy about it. She's even less happy when she finds a dead body beside her aunt's chicken coop and a mysterious grave in the garden of Minnie's only close neighbor, the sullen and scarred Olin Burgess.

It’s October 1923, and three interesting things are going on in the generally dull town of Rosedale: the fall cattle drive, the fall rodeo, and a tent revival.

Annabelle Blue is excited about the first two events. The tent revival might be okay if it weren’t for Esther, whose ethereal loveliness has captivated all the men in town, including Annabelle’s long-time beau, Phil Gunderson. In spite of this, Annabelle pitches in and helps prepare for the rodeo.

In 1923 flooding is not uncommon in Rosedale, New Mexico, but Annabelle Blue has never found a corpse floating in the floodwaters before now.

As if discovering the body of the murdered president of the Rosedale Farmer’s and Rancher’s Bank isn’t bad enough, Annabelle is further dismayed when her brother-in-law falls under suspicion. Since Annabelle has no faith in the local police, she sets out to discover who the true murderer is, dragging her longsuffering boyfriend, Phil Gunderson, along with her.