Fallen Man reunites Tony Hillerman's two cops of the Navajo Tribal Police, Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, to solve a decade-old mystery, the disappearance of Hal Breedlove. At the novel's beginning, two climbers discover his skeleton near the top of Ship Rock, a large rock formation that thrusts above the New Mexican desert. The novel addresses two major social concerns important in the West, the treatment of Navajo holy places and the proper use of land.

Called "Tse' Bit' a'i'", or the Sacred Mountain of the North, Ship Rock is a holy place in Navajo mythology. As Leaphorn notes, the mountain is so sacred that no Navajo would "be disrespectful enough even to climb it". White mountain climbers, however, view Ship Rock differently. They consider it one of the most challenging climbs in the Southwest, in part because several experienced climbers had previously died in the...