Just as Henry Thoreau, Charlie Johnson finds himself an alien to his contemporaries. On a quiet lake he finds solitude some would suspect a place to heal or hide and a purpose. But his predictable world is shattered when Sheriff Bodeman requires his tracking expertise. The object of the Sheriff s search, a suspected serial killer known as The Skinner, carries a secret of immense importance. The search sets off a chain of events that quickly challenge not only Johnson s survival skills, but also casts him into an unlikely alliance with a corporate executive and a young, out spoken woman deputy. He immediately trusts Jerry Koler, but his relationship with Lora Whitney gets complicated. He owes her his life, but her loyalties are unclear. Johnson has no idea something is missing from his life until he suddenly becomes the hunted, and is forced to come to terms with his own past. A critical turning point in his life becomes the focal point of all past events, even the death of an ancient mammoth. Two months earlier he knew Lora Whitney only by sight, and Jerry Koler, Chris Colby, and Maclin Ethek not at all