South of Soledad: The Soledad Murders (Paperback)

Gene Carter, a bone-thin farm boy with glasses and a homemade wooden leg, almost gets killed on his sixteenth birthday by someone shooting at him with an elephant gun, no less. He discovers workers have been disappearing from the Salinas Valley without a trace and he sets out to find out why. He falls in love, smitten beyond his wildest dreams by a spirited waitress, field worker and college student named Rita. He accidentally learns deadly nightshade, a common weed in the Salinas Valley, contains an active ingredient called atropine, is nearly identical to cocaine at the molecular level. He leads a fleet of police down Highway 101 in a chase where speeds reach over one hundred and forty miles an hour. He gets arrested, taken to jail and charged with seventeen felonies. He discovers a D9 Caterpillar can easily pulverize a barn wall. He adopts a fine dog. He shoots a helicopter out of the sky. He solves twenty-seven murders. And he learns to believe in miracles.