Engineer and nuclear sub veteran Lorenzo Giangrande's debut novel Debt of Conscience is a passionate revelatory glimpse into secrets of U.S. sociopolitical guilt and economic vulnerability to terrorism. In a narrative spanning from the American Southwest and northern Great Lakes to the breeding grounds of hatred in the Mideast and the halls of power in Washington, D.C., Giangrande weaves together disparate storylines  -- one of Native American nations determined to see their sovereignty recognized and crimes against them redressed by the highest law of the land, the other of an Iraqi madman plotting to destroy vital lines of commerce in an act so bold and unexpected that none can be prepared.

In 1813, an alliance of Native American nations led by the great Shawnee warrior and prophet Tecumseh made a stand against the military might of a young U.S. government that had broken so many promises to native peoples, usurping their lands and attempting to exterminate those who would live in peace with the white newcomers. On the eve of the battle, Tecumseh saw his own death and the scattering and diminution of the native nations in a vision. But he also prophesied that two warriors would arise in eight generations from the land of red stone and hot sand who would unite their people and return them to their rightful place as a sovereign nation.

More than a century and a half later, the birth of twin boys descended from the Shawnee in New Mexico on a Pueblo reservation heralds the imminent fulfillment of Tecumseh's prophecy. Educated in history and law and schooled in Native American traditions and in the legacy of crimes against their people by their tribal elder foster father, the brothers lead the charge to galvanize the sundry native nations into a coalition that will ultimately take on the Supreme Court in a bid to see the wrongs against Native Americans since before the inception of the United States redressed. But their rightful challenge weakens the U.S. in international eyes, and the popular sitting President, the man covertly responsible for Saddam Hussein's assassination, finds himself under pressure to see this problem resolved, and quickly.

But an insidious Iraqi terrorist driven to cripple the hated U.S. threatens American power and standing from a vastly different direction. He has laid out a plan to take out the vital St. Lawrence Seaway commercial shipping lane by draining Lake Erie, and he will stop at nothing to see his scheme come to fruition.