“I never meant to be complicit in the death of my only real friend in Patagonia. I certainly didn’t want the possible father of my child to suffer untold agonies by torturous nerve toxin poisoning. After all, I’m a physician, a healer.”

So begins Derrik Woodbury’s novel Pawns of the Wall which tells the story of a love triangle fractured by a mysterious murder. The pastoral border town of Patagonia, Arizona, is already in turmoil from the new US government's immigration policies. This murder connects many threads in a tapestry of intrigue and betrayal. Could the highest office of the US government sanction a pseudo-terrorist attack at the border to strengthen its base and secure continual political power? Would Russia aid the US in a cover-up?

Dr. Robert Harper has left New England for a sabbatical as chief physician at the Indian Clinic in Patagonia. Harper soon falls in love with the clinic’s beautiful nurse, Mary Durant, and befriends Dylan Kermer, an enigmatic government security consultant, who is young, passionate, and dangerous. 

Durant falls under Kermer’s spell and is torn between two very different lovers. Violence is in the air. The people are rocked and divided by the decisions in Washington, DC. This world is suffused with history, tradition, violence, drugs, guns, ignorance, fear, beauty, and love.