Sally Rawson’s story is that her family was part of a peaceful sheepherding village from Spain who resettled in northern Idaho after World War II. She is about to find out that her story is a long-buried lie.

Sally has been married to Chip Rawson of the Bitterroot County Sheriff’s Department for a long long time. Chip is a failed politician and a long-time leader in the Sheriff’s Department, notably mainly for his lack of ambition and accomplishment. Now, finally, in retirement, the couple thinks they’ll find time to relax and enjoy the riches of the northern Idaho landscape.

But when an old murder threatens to unearth Sally’s family history, Chip and Sally join forces to confront the past. Pursued by corrupt politicians and Spanish investigators whose job is not to uncover – but to bury the truth – Sally and Chip uncover the truth of the Basque group that re-settled in Idaho, and find the threads of their lies infecting everything they know in Idaho.

Concluding in a startling confrontation with Sally’s own family, Dark Times is an extraordinary novel that shows once again – in William Faulkner’s famous phrase – that the past is never really past.