Shan, an ex-police inspector who spent years in a Chinese prison, is the intriguing protagonist of this literary thriller set in the stunning and rarely portrayed landscape of modern Tibet. While Shan's search for a stolen sacred relic in a Himalayan valley whose underground wealth is the center of explorations by a Sino-American oil consortium provides the novel's central plot, the real crime, Beijing's efforts to eradicate the remnants of Tibet's spiritual and cultural heritage, is more fully and engagingly portrayed. The central motif of the novel--Shan's travels with a salt caravan, at first guarding and then searching for the relic after it mysteriously disappears-- becomes a journey toward enlightenment whose denouement is more than worth the trip for readers who opt to suspend disbelief and travel with Shan and his companions to the centuries-old cave of the medicine lamas. Bone Mountain is a rich, complicated, and original exploration into the extraordinary power of belief, faith, and the triumph of the human spirit, as complex and compelling as Tibet itself.