Based on true events, this first book in the Evergreen Cemetery Mystery Series creates a Santa Cruz of the 1860s, complete with opium dens, brothels, and fandangos. Embroiled in the espionage of the Civil War, Andrew Jackson Sloan finds himself pressed into service as an undercover U.S. Marshal ordered to investigate the ties of his brother-in-law, a prominent politician, to a Confederate gang of thieves. He travels southward, through New Almaden and its mines, interfacing with historical figures such as William Brewer (Up and Down California) and Tiburcio Vasquez (Bandido). During Marshall Sloan's investigation he is haunted, while traversing a singular gulch, by ghostly voices warning Sloan of his own betrayal and his death. Skeptical of this experience, he works to outmaneuver this fate. With the help of an eccentric inventor, a brilliant bandido, and a clever Hawaiian Princess hiding as a Californio boy, they discover clues in a cemetery called Evergreen that reveal the truth about the future. Could he change the destiny of his family, the outcome of the war, and the fate of Santa Cruz by heeding the ghosts in the gulch?