DESERT WINDS, set in the early 2000s in Coachella Valley, California, is a mystery-thriller story that begins with an unlikely, naïve protagonist named Sheldon Goodman. Sheldon had no life plan and was destined to be a lost soul. His mother was a drug addict and disappeared two months after entering a church drug rehabilitation program. At 18 he left the church home and roamed the Coachella Valley until he was befriended by the Assistant Director of Security for the Tranquilo Band of Mission Indians. This man groomed Sheldon to become a soldier into the reservation's secret operations with CIA partnerships and other illegal operations with cartels and local gangs. After helping to cremate the body of the newly elected chairman of the Tribal Council, who was also his girlfriend's uncle, Sheldon determines to face his own poor choices, his failures, and his fears. He confesses to his ex-bosses at the crematory, becomes a confidential informant for the Riverside Sheriffs who are investigating the disappearance and a double murder connected to the reservation, and even tells Connie the fate of her uncle. When he and Connie determine to find evidence that his mom was sex trafficked at the church's women's home, she decides to go undercover, but is taken, and he is kidnapped and marked for death to cover up CIA involvement at the reservation. He now must find strength and courage he never knew he possessed or be killed and labeled a murderer.