Marfa Rocks Hardback - 2011

Chef Brett Baldwin desperately needs some time off - time to get back to simply cooking at his restaurant Mesquite in the artsy Far West Texas town of Marfa. And the temporary departure of his new love, local-girl-turned-Hollywood star Meridyth Morgan, promises exactly that. Their dangerous adventure confronting a Mexican drug lord on the wrong side of the border had tested both beyond measure, leaving scars visible and otherwise. Still, there's one thing that's certain about working in the small Texas town of your birth: you can't avoid confronting someone or something from your past for long. At the pleading of his high school football coach, Brett agrees to help search for the man's missing daughter - last heard from unearthing ancient rock carvings alongside her charismatic professor in northern Mexico. Within hours of backing into yet another non-culinary Good Samaritan mission, Brett finds himself stepping over some very mysterious shadows - shady art dealer Carlton Thornhill III of Las Vegas and Marfa, the young woman's volatile boyfriend Kerry Mosby, and most of all, international petroglyph authority Dr. Hildegard Dane. Dr. Dane's lust for rocks that reveal ancient secrets may prove nothing compared to her lust for Brett himself. It's a tangled web whenever Brett lets himself be drawn away from the kitchen, one that will require all the help he can get from his dark-skinned Aztec of a sous chef Gilberto Cruz, from his long-suffering attorney Diane Cordova, and most of all, from his huge and creatively armed native American sidekick Jud Garcia. Wearing an FBI wire as accessory to his jeans, boots and beloved MLC cowboy hat, Brett will be forced to test his courage and strength once again. And the enigmatic rocks left behind by ancient civilizations will have nothing on the mysteries and cruelties he'll confront along these high mountain passes, too far from cooking and way too far from home.