On my annual family vacation to Emerald Isle in North Carolina this year I was in search of suitable beach reading -- I had gotten overly excited and pre-read most of my beach books well before the actual trip. Fortunately, at the beachfront house we rented there was a bookshelf full of trashy reads that included a few gems. Of these, Tony Hillerman's The Dark Wind stood out.
I love Hillerman's writing. His books feature (mostly separately) two compelling protagonists, Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, both of the Navaho Nation Police, and a third, mesmerizing character: the Four Corners area of the West. The setting for Hillerman's mysteries add a layer of interest and context to his novels that most writers lack. In addition, the land serves as grounding for the equally engaging practices of the Navajo Indians, an important element in his "long and respectful interest" in Native American culture.
Here is what I mean; in the book Detective Jim Chee sets out to interview a woman who lives on a remote plateau:
"Black Mesa is neither black nor a mesa. It is far too large for that definition -- a vast, broken plateau about the size and shape of Connecticut. It is virtually roadless, almost waterless, and uninhabited except for an isolated scattering of summer herding camps. It rises out of the Painted Desert more than seven thousand feet. A dozen major dry washes and a thousand nameless arroyos drain away runoff from its bitter winters and the brief but torrential 'male rains' of the summer thunderstorm season. It takes its name from the seams of coal exposed in its towering cliffs, but its colors are the grays and greens of sage, rabbit brush, juniper, cactus, grama and bunch grass, mesquite, pinon, and (in the few places where springs flow) pine and spruce. It is a lonely place even in grazing season and has always been territory favored by the Holy People of the Navajo and the kachinas and guarding spirits of the Hopis. Masaw, the bloody-faced custodian of the Fourth World of the Hopis, specifically instructed various clans of the Peaceful People to return there when they completed their epic migrations and to live on the three mesas which extend like great gnarled fingers from Black Mesa's southern ramparts. Its craggy cliffs are the eagle-collection grounds of the Hopi Flute, Side Corn, Drift Sand, Snake, and Water clans. It is dotted with shrines and holy places. For Chee's people it was an integral part of Dinetah, where Changing Woman taught the Dinee they must live in the beauty of the Way she and the Holy People taught them."
-- Hillerman, Tony. The Dark Wind. Thorndike, ME: Thorndike Press, 1982. Pp. 167-68.
It is typically gorgeous writing that adds real resonance to the story itself and contributes to the larger narrative arc of all of Hillerman's series, which are embedded in the culture and landscape of its characters, whether criminals or law enforcement officers. If you haven't read one of Tony Hillerman's 18 Navajo mysteries go to your local library and have them dig around in the stacks to loan you one. If you have, reread one STAT.
PS - Speaking of evocative words, "You Worry Me" by Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats is a moody blues; now playing on iTunes.
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