Picnic in the Ruins by Todd Robert Petersen; 2021. Softcover

A madcap caper across the RV-strewn vacation lands of southern Utah meets a meditation on mythology, authenticity, the ethics of preservation, and one nagging question: "who owns the past?" Anthropologist Sophia Shepard is researching the impact of tourism on cultural sites in a remote national monument on the Utah-Arizona border when she unexpectedly crosses paths with two small-time criminals. The Ashdown brothers were hired to steal maps from a "collector" of Native American artifacts, but instead of delivering as promised, the brothers are out to strike it rich. But their ineptitude has alerted the local sheriff to their presence--and forced their employer, a former lobbyist seeking lucrative monument land that may soon be open to energy exploration, to send a fixer to clean up their mess before it upsets her machinations.Sheriff Dalton, following the Ashdowns' trail, soon discovers he's not dealing with a simple burglary--and any hope the sheriff had for peace and quiet is long gone.