When Mount Rushmore suddenly disappears—no more presidents gracing its face—The American Observer sends Emelia Sunlake to give the California perspective.

Emelia wants to put "a white, middle-class, female California perspective" on the experience. But she soon discovers that everyone—white, black, Native and non-Native—sees this strange phenomenon differently.

Chosen as one of the best stories of 1994, "Monuments to the Dead" shows Kristine Kathryn Rusch at her best.

"Kristine Kathryn Rusch integrates the fantastic elements so rigorously into her story that it is often hard to remember she is not merely recording the here and now."

—Science Fiction Weekly