Water Touching Stone

An unlikely group of outcasts dash across the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau, summoned by the news that a venerated school teacher has been murdered and an ancient lama is missing. The two old Tibetans are rushing to restore the spiritual balanced caused by the violent death. The sullen Tibetan resistance fighter is racing to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, the exiled former investigator from Beijing, just released from four years in the gulug, has set out to find justice, an elusive goal among the embittered and forgotten people of western China.Soon Shan finds himself in the dangerous world of the borderlands, populated by vengeful Chinese officials, corrupt soldiers of the People's Liberation Army, daring smugglers, hidden Buddhists and remnants of the proud Kazakh Moslem clans, as he follows the grim path left by the killer. One by one, young boys, all students of the dead teacher, are being murdered.Guided by a spirited young Kazakh woman, Shan begins to peel away the many layers of secrets that hide the true motives of the killer, stumbling across the body of a dead American in the local prison, being brought to the haunting ruins of an ancient buried city along the Old Silk Road, searching for an apparent infliltrator of the dissident movement, and discovering a team of foreign scientists clandestinely working to reveal the truth about the region's ethnic heritage.One moment experiencing the serene reverence of an ancient shrine, the next feeling the horror of being buried alive in the desert, Shan encounters the many faces of courage found among oppressed peoples. Ultimately Shan's answer can be found only by revealing still greater tragedies, and justice, in the rough form he has come to expect in Tibet, is available only if he is able to piece the hatred and distrust that has been bread by Beijing's rule.Pattison, Eliot is the author of 'Water Touching Stone' with ISBN 9780312206123 and ISBN 0312206127.