Marguerite Boyer longs for peace to return to her homeland, instead she discovers six decapitated bodies at the junction of the Maumee and Auglaize Rivers. A New York fur trader and his five Canadien canoemen have been brutally murdered.The year is 1766, in a war-torn part of North America that the French call the Pays d'en Haut and the British know as the Upper Country. It is contested ground, though diplomats in Paris have recently granted it to Britain. Marguerite was born here, the product of generations of intermarriage between French fur traders and Native people. Ensign Phineas Philbrook, a New Englander serving in the British Army, has recently arrived in Detroit, the hub of the Great Lakes fur trade and Britain's principal army outpost on the Great Lakes. An observant young man with a penchant for nature and drawing, he dreams of exploring Western lands.Philbrook is ordered to investigate the killings at Auglaize, and Marguerite is hired as his interpreter. Over the course of their investigations they encounter fur traders, French Canadian settlers, British soldiers, and members of the Miami and Ottawa nations. Can Philbrook and Marguerite discover what happened at Auglaize? Only if they enlist the help of the diverse population who called the Pays d'en Haut home.
