Sergeant Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is on a personal mission. Hiking deep into Antelope Canyon on Lake Powell in Arizona, he is seeking out a cave containing ancient carvings and wall paintings, drawn by prehistoric ancestors of the Indian Nations. This popular recreational area has attracted boaters, campers and hikers for over 50 years. But as demand for more water amidst the ballooning population growth draws the lake’s capacity ever lower, the sacred drawings are being exposed.

Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, Chee’s former partner and mentor, had discovered the drawings made perhaps thousands of years ago and shared sketches and photographs with a renowned aging archaeologist. Chee is hiking into the depths of the canyon to explore the region armed with a crudely drawn map. Always drawn to the ways and beliefs of the ancient Navajo, Chee is also on a personal retreat to decide his future as a police officer. He remains interested in helping people, but sometimes issuing speeding tickets and breaking up bar fights don’t live up to his expectations of what policing is supposed to mean.

"...a dual novel about Native American history and the challenges to preserve sacred sites and artifacts, and the battle between profiteering and protection.... [THE SACRED BRIDGE is] an exciting and informative tale..."

As Chee tops a ridge on the rugged landscape, he pulls out his binoculars to stand in awe of the sacred Rainbow Bridge. As he looks down at the lake, he spots something bobbing in the water along the shoreline far below. He makes his way down the precarious gravel trail and realizes it’s a human body in a lifejacket floating face down. Unable to reach the shore in the treacherous footing, he takes pictures, then climbs back up the trail where he spots a camping tent that is zipped shut. After finding that it’s uninhabited, he looks inside and sees a few pot shards and other illegal artifacts. As he scans the area with his binoculars, he can make out ancient drawings carved on the rocks: concentric circles, shields, handprints, four-legged creatures with antlers.

Chee has already missed his ride back, so he reports the body to the people at the dock. It will be another night under the stars to ponder his future before returning to his wife, fellow officer Bernadette Manuelito. Whether the signs carved on the rocks are clan markings, records of successful kills, or were just drawn for their beauty, they reflect humanity’s long-held wish not to pass away unnoticed. Chee wonders what stories the old ones tell to explain Rainbow Bridge, and if, like himself, they view it as a link to another reality.

Back in Shiprock, Bernie is driving home when a hitchhiker desperately tries to get into her locked passenger door. He throws something into her partially opened rear door window as he calls out in a foreign language, then dashes onto the highway where an oncoming car heads directly for him and strikes him. The driver proceeds to make a U-turn and purposely runs him over again. Horrified, Bernie flags down a UPS truck and takes hold of the situation before calling for assistance. When she gets home, she notices a bag in the backseat that reeks of marijuana. At the police station, she takes it to the evidence room where they find, among the victim’s personal belongings, 20 bags of marijuana buds and two unlabeled pill bottles --- one containing a USB drive and another that looks like medication.

Bernie had been bringing up the subject of taking the exam to become a detective, and after witnessing the brutal murder, she becomes even more determined to find out why this desperate man was killed. Well-versed in computers, she requests to be assigned undercover at the lab to find out more about the operation. She is given the USB drive, dyes her hair, uses facial putty for a disguise, and applies for a job there.

Anne Hillerman’s protagonists are in personal danger as they pursue justice. Chee finds himself in peril as he discovers that a man he once thought of as a friend has turned on him. Bernie is caught using the USB drive to derive information from the company’s computer. Her captors threaten to kill her mother; she is tased and tied up before making a horrific escape from the lab.

Thus begins a dual novel about Native American history and the challenges to preserve sacred sites and artifacts, and the battle between profiteering and protection. The same dilemma looms. Would building more motels and recreational sites around national monuments benefit the public, or would it cause irreversible damage to what are classified as sacred archaeological sites? Without being preachy, Hillerman creates an exciting and informative tale that seeks to place these double-edged Catch-22s on a personal level, linking the modern-day quandary of legal vs. illegal to need vs. desire.