Bone Game is a murder mystery on a grand scale. Cole McCurtain, a mixed-blood Indian professor of Indian Studies at Santa Cruz, California, is haunted by dreams dating back to events of Spanish California. Images of a Spanish priest murdered in 1812, a rearing grizzly bear, and a black-and-white painted Indian who offers bones in his extended hands come at a time when dismembered pieces of a young woman are washing ashore in 1993. The dreams become increasingly urgent as the murders become more frequent, and Cole’s family and friends gather to help—including Choctaw relatives who travel west from Mississippi because "this story’s so big, Cole sees only a little bit of it."