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A crow and his 'murder' witness a murder. At the center of it all is a young woman who isn't quite what she seems - and neither is the myth she's wandered out of to seek justice.                                              On the toxic shores of Lake Onondaga, ancient and indigenous mythology collides with environmental reckoning in this literary thriller narrated by nature's own Greek chorus, a philosophical crow named, ZAX. 

                                                               SCREECH OWL 

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                                       PROLOGUE

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        A vulture will go for your eyes first, then crack open the skull with their powerful beak, and pick out your brains. Black vultures hunt by eyesight, while turkey vultures hunt by smell - an efficient killing machine when working together as a 'committee of vultures.' Humans are much the same. Although the difference between a human and a vulture is that the vulture knows what it is.                                                                                                                                                           Looking down from the treetops, my murder of crows and I observed this committee of vultures hard at work on a human body, ripping flesh, tugging at the torso with the sweet aroma of blood thick in the air. As I watched this sanguine sport in the arena below, a human stepped out of the fog that surrounded the lake on that fateful evening late in May. Considered by your human standards to be a golden-haired beauty, I recognized her as the young female who worked for the old woman at the family house. Drenched in the rain, she stood at the edge of a deep hole holding the shovel she had used earlier that day to dig the grave. Smiling, she took in the feasting ritual of the vultures - unafraid. 

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