Rabbit Moon

They say you can't go back home, but Marin Sinclair, end-of-life doula, doesn't expect her life to be in danger when she answers a mysterious plea for help from a long-ago friend and returns to Dinetah, the Navajo Nation. Her past there holds memories she is reluctant to confront, but what about her life then would make someone want to kill her?
Navajo Nation Police Sergeant Justin Blue Eyes shares a connection with Marin from the past, and he has a few questions of his own when Marin disappears—such as why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has agents investigating the abandoned uranium mines on the reservation and how Marin is connected.
Marin needs to survive to find any answers, and to do so she is forced to run, going off the grid on her own in the Lukachukai mountains with unknown killers close behind.

Drawing from her years in the Southwest and on the Navajo Nation, Jan D. Payne writes using themes of courage, regret, hope, and restoration in a world of kinships within differing cultures. Through her characters' lives—Marin Sinclair, end-of-life doula; Sergeant Justin Blue Eyes of the Navajo Nation Police; Cullen MacPherson, Nuclear Regulatory Commission agent; Garret Washburn, teenaged ward; and Lewis George, spirit-guide—she explores cultural backgrounds and how friendships forged in crisis have the power to shape our lives.
Jan Payne lived on the Dineh (Navajo) reservation on the New Mexico side of the Lukachukai mountain range, where she climbed the mesas, took horseback camping trips, explored mountain ghost towns, and worked with her dad training horses. Her most memorable summer jobs include working with pack-mule trains at a dude ranch and a brief stint as camp cook in a uranium mining camp.
A graduate of Shiprock High School in Shiprock, New Mexico, she also holds university and medical degrees, as well as a graduate degree in Christian Studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.
She attributes an early interest in writing to a wealth of family stories, including that of a great-great aunt taken captive by Comanche/Kiowa raiders in 1870's Texas.

Jan D. Payne is a member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West and she and her husband, Jon, live in the Leech Lake area of northern Minnesota with their three big dogs—Kaibab, Rudi, and Orrin. Visit her website at: jandpayne.com