The House of Three Murders

For over twenty five years, The House of Three Murders has squatted, abandoned and decaying, deep inside a dense mesquite and tamarisk thicket in the middle of the vast Mojave Desert. The infamous house was the site of gruesome and bloody multiple murders. The murders have gradually passed into barely-remembered Mojave Desert legend, but the house remains, foreboding, forlorn and nearly forgotten. Then, on a moonlight November night in 1960, five people are there at the same time. Well, four technically, because one of them has just died from a gunshot wound! Three of the five are teenagers from the tiny, desert southwest town of Smoke Tree. They should be playing a significant role in an event important to their school and their town. But on a whim they decide not to go. Instead, they drive down a dusty dirt road deep into the Colorado River bottom to the House of Three Murders. Unaware there are two men inside, they burn it to the ground! The fire leads to a series of events. Their lives spin out of control, and none of them will ever be the same. Nor will the life of the man who is alive. A young Native American of the Fort Mojave Band of Mojave Indians, he is bound hand and foot next to a dead man when the teenagers arrive. He escapes the fire and embarks on a life-changing adventure on a quest to discover his sumach ‘a hot, or special gift. He will not be happy with what he finds. The teenagers: Johnny Quentin. Star quarterback. A superb athlete, but not the typical high school football jock. He is bright, perceptive, intuitive…and lonely. He lives unsupervised and almost unnoticed by a widowed father who has been mourning the death of his wife for six years. Because of that loneliness, he has one huge blind spot. He is hopelessly, foolishly, dangerously in love with a steady girlfriend who does not love him. Judy McPhearson. Stunningly beautiful, but cruelly cold and selfish, she’s just passing time until she can get out of Smoke Tree and away from all the stupid people there, including Johnny Quentin. Aede