The Mourner's Bench

New Mexico Territory, 1887. A beloved mission priest walks into the desert and doesn't come back. The sheriff calls it an accident. The old woman weeping at the mission gate every morning doesn't believe it — and neither does Reverend Elias Cane.

Sent south by a Methodist bishop to follow up on a letter no one else took seriously, Cane finds himself navigating a world that has no place for him: a Catholic mission, a Pueblo community with centuries of reasons to distrust outsiders, and a land speculator quietly strangling both with fraudulent water rights claims.

The priest is not dead. But finding him — and keeping him alive — will cost Cane everything he thought he understood about faith, justice, and who gets to call something sacred.