In the New Mexico village of Camposanto, a priest is tied to a cross made from a sacred cottonwood tree. Father Lorenzo Soledad's adversaries, the impoverished Calabazas, observe from below. This gripping novel by a New Mexico writer who has spent a lifetime pondering the complicated cultures of the Southwest tells Soledad's story from his boyhood in a Texas bordello to his final day in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.